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Catherine Cunningham

Recipe is anything but a piece of cake

SPAGHETTI FOR BREAKFAST

BY Catherine Cunningham, Humour Columnist June 23, 2009 07:06

I received an email from my friend Susie yesterday. It contained a recipe for chocolate cake in a mug.

For the record, there are at least 22 mugs in my cupboard.

I think she's trying to kill me.

Susie and I have been friends for 30 years but what other reason could there be for sending me such a thing? Chocolate is my kryptonite. I have no power to resist it. Besides...

"What harm could a little mug of cake do?"

Within minutes of reading the e-mail, I set myself up to make a chocolate cake of miniature proportions. I lined up flour, sugar, eggs, milk, oil, vanilla, chocolate chips, and a coffee mug on the kitchen counter before discovering that I did not have any cocoa powder.

This slowed me down. Cocoa is a pretty vital ingredient in homemade chocolate cake no matter how small. Since I'd never made a cake that didn't involve the words Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines, I had no cocoa in the house.

A search for a substitute ingredient turned up some Nestle Quik chocolate syrup. But it was a liquid and this called for a powder. I needed a dry substitution. Cinnamon? Cinnamon was a tasty powder. It worked well in baked goods. But until they mass market Nestlé Cinnamon bars, cinnamon can't compete with cocoa.

I was left with the tried and true Duncan Hines cake mix in my cupboard. I opened the box and scooped out two tablespoons into the mug.

It looked meagre.

I scooped out a few more spoonfuls... 3/4 of a cup worth. Now there wasn't enough room in the mug for the rest of the ingredients. Logic dictated that I dump the cake mix from the mug into a larger bowl. While I was at it, I figured I might as well toss in the remaining mix from the box. I don't like to waste.

However now I wasn't sure whether I should still add in the flour and sugar. The recipe said to, but flour and sugar were probably already built into the cake mix. In fact the only things the cake mix lacked were eggs, oil and a splash of water. I put away the milk, vanilla and chocolate chips and added the missing ingredients.

After I finished stirring I looked from the batter to the mug. I had a lot of extra batter. Fitting it into a single coffee mug was likely to prove problematic. And to dirty 22 mugs seemed senseless. I dug out a couple of 9" cake pans and filled them.

The recipe called for a microwave cooking time of three minutes. But that was for one mug. I had no idea what the conversion time would be for two pans. The instructions on the cake mix box on the other hand, said to put the pans in a 350° oven for 32 to 36 minutes.

I made sure to pre-heat the oven.

Afterwards I frosted my double-layer cake and placed in on my cake platter. When dinner was over I served slices to my family.

"I love this cake Mom." my six-year-old sighed. Her brothers nodded in agreement.

I left Gord to oversee the cake plate clean up and stole to the computer to send an email to Susie:

'Great cake! Forgive you for trying to kill me. Any chance you have a recipe for apple pie à la mode in a mug too?'

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