A Thing-A-Week Part 38: Cake in a Mug

So I found online the following recipe:

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
a small splash of vanilla extract

Essentially, you mix all those ingredients in that order in a large coffee mug and microwave it for about 3 minutes and you get cake...theoretically. I tried it and what you get is a large brown lump of slightly burnt cocoa with a sort of waxy rubbery texture. It is cake if you squint really really hard. I wasn't really surprised but a little disappointed. There has to be a way to manage the science to get something more cake like. I think chocolate is right out unless it is a white cake with chocolate chips because the temperature is too hot and too fast for cocoa which burns fairly easily.

I didn't take pictures but this website is almost exactly what it looks like. Although their's looks more like cake so perhaps the wattage on my microwave is too high. It could have been that my cocoa was too good as well. I have noticed some recipes only really work with a more generic cocoa.

Although in doing a web search there are all sorts of variations online so perhaps it could just have been a bad example. I am not sure whether or not it warrants further investigation though because at the end of it, I know that mixing all of the same ingredients and just baking it an oven will yield good cake as opposed to sub standard cake. And no one deserves sub standard cake.

A Thing-A-Week Part 37: Stew

It's a very Hobbit dinner Charlie Brown!

So I have never been much for stew. My father always made gallons of it whenever my mom was out of town and my brother and I grew up hating the stuff. But I wanted something hearty and autumn-like that I could cook all day in the crock pot. I thought I would give it a try.

I have learned from my limited cooking experience that it is time and attention to detail that makes simple food so wonderful. So I decided to put a little energy into everything rather than just dumping it all in the pot. I did a little research and looked at a few recipes on line and this is what I came up with:

1. Mix flour, paprika, salt, and pepper. Roll cubed beef in the seasoning mixture and then place in a frying pan with hot olive oil. Sear/fry until brown on the outside. Transfer meat to crockpot.

2. Dice an onion and place in same frying pan to absorb the flavors of the meat drippings and olive oil. Add diced garlic. Saute until slightly brown. Transfer to crockpot. Deglaze the pan with a little port and add to the rest.

3. Dice 4 potatoes and about 2 cups of carrots and add.

4. Add broth (beef would have been better but I had some chicken that I needed to use up) and add Worcestershire sauce and a bay leaf. Let cook for 4 hours on high.

5. Mix 1 tbsp each of flour and cornstarch with about a cup of water. Whisk vigoursly until there are no lumps and add to put. Then I seasoned with some seasoned salt, pepper, nutmeg, and mustard powder. Remove bay leaf.

I served with buttermilk biscuits I had made from scratch (I need to remember not to roll those so thing when I am making them or they don't puff), chedder cheese, and apple cider. It was very hearty and not bad. I thought the base needed more flavor but I think I might try making the thickner on the stove with a little port and using beef broth next time.