Somedays all one needs is a cup of comfort – hot cocoa, steaming soup or a mug cake, for selfish, personal enjoyment. One such evening with an intense craving for chocolate I went looking for things to bake with. Stumbled upon recipes and ultimately decided to adapt the Banana Peanut-Butter Oats Mug Cake by Sakshi. I tweaked a few things for this chocolate mug cake recipe. It can be easily served as a vegan dessert by simply switching milk with a vegan milk option such as oat or almond milk.
No flour? Your breakfast cereal will do!
One of the reasons this recipe has oats is that at the time of my craving I didn’t have flour in the pantry. Rolled oats I did. Those were duly ground up and baked. The easiest way to convert any grain into flour or rough meal is to use a coffee grinder. If you don’t have one, I am afraid you might have to make that trip to the store.
Let’s bake a chocolate mug cake:
Preparation: 10 minutues
Cooking time: 2 minutes
Ingredients:
- Oat flour – 1 cup
- Unsweetened Cocoa powder – 6 tbsp
- Baking powder – 1/2 tsp
- Baking soda – 1/2 tsp
- Salt 1 tsp
- Coconut oil – 4 tbsp
- Sugar – 4 to 6 tbsp
- Milk – 1/2 cup
Method:
First, grind oats for making flour. For 1 cup oat flour, you’ll need about 1 cup plus 2 to 4 tablespoons of rolled oats. Start with 1 cups of oats. Blend in a coffee grinder until powdery. It is entirely up to you to decide how fine you want your oats to be. Measure this. Grind additional oats until you have 1 cup of flour.
Next, in a bowl measure and add all the dry ingredients. The flour we just ground, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix well to combine all of these.
In a separate and slightly larger mixing bowl, measure coconut oil. I chose coconut oil over my usual preference for olive oil because I wanted a really decadent, soft texture in the center of the cake. Wait and watch, it will get there eventually!
To the oil first add sugar and mix well, just as you would cream sugar and butter for a cake. Next add milk followed by all the dry ingredients prepared earlier. Beat well until you get a batter that is the consistency of thick pancake batter.
To convert this into a vegan recipe the only change required is to replace milk with a vegan option. I’ve baked with almond milk and would recommend using that. A 1:1 switch with milk should work fine.
Lightly grease two microwave proof mugs. Fill them halfway with the batter. Then, one at a time, cook for about 2 minutes. Check at 1 minute 30 seconds with a toothpick to see if its done. Increase time in 10 second intervals. Look out for the sides, if they are coming away from the mugs then the cake is ready. The center for this mug cake will be moist and fudgy.
Let the cake rest for a few seconds before digging in. It will be really hot and you could burn yourself. Wait long enough to be able to hold the mug 😛
My favourite way to eat a mug cake it to add a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream on top. Of course this would beat the purpose of making a vegan cake, but it is so good! Try a vegan ice cream, you wont regret having that extra layer of lusciousness. Trust me!
Cozy up this holiday with chocolate mug cakes!
- Oat flour – 1 cup
- Unsweetened Cocoa powder – 6 tbsp
- Baking powder – 1/2 tsp
- Baking soda – 1/2 tsp
- Salt 1 tsp
- Coconut oil – 4 tbsp
- Sugar – 4 to 6 tbsp
- Milk – 1/2 cup
- First grind 1 cup of rolled oats in a coffee grinder to make oat flour.
- Measure all the dry ingredients except sugar and mix in a bowl.
- In a second mixing bowl measure coconut oil.
- Add sugar to the oil and mix well.
- Measure milk and add to the creamed sugar.
- Finally, combine the wet and dry ingredients beating well to get a batter the consistency of pancake batter.
- Lightly grease two microwave safe mugs with some oil or butter.
- Pour batter half way in the mugs and microwave, one at a time, for 1 minute 30 seconds each.
- Check with toothpick to see if the cakes are cooked through.
- If needed cook for additional 10 seconds at a time.
- Grind the flour as fine as you prefer.
- You shouldn't need to cook for more than a total of 2 minutes per mug cake.
Super recipe.