The Absolute Best Mug Cakes Cookbook: 100+ Family-Friendly Microwave Cakes

by Rockridge Press

Baking Has Never Been This Easy
Discover how simple it is to bake amazingly tasty cake from scratch. All you need is a mug, a microwave, and a few basic ingredients, and you'll be feasting on a delicious homemade cake in minutes. Whether you're craving the classics, seasonal flavors, holiday-themed treats, bottomless chocolate, or fresh fruit galore, The Absolute Best Mug Cakes Cookbook ensures that everyone in your household will get exactly what they want. Bake your way through a wide range of satisfying and easy-to-prepare treats


100+ irresistible mug cake recipes, including Salted Caramel, Cinnamon Roll, Mexican Chocolate, and ConfettiDozens of options for gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, paleo and vegan diets so that no one will miss out on the funTroubleshooting tips to ensure immediate mug cake successInventive ideas for mug cake activities, gifts, and partiesA creative guide to developing your own mug cake recipes

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Reference, Nonfiction

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 2, 2015

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

MARCH PROJECT IS OVER!!!

MUG CAKE MARCH PART TWO. part one can be found here, and let's hope this is an improvement.

GOOEY CHOCOLATE

sticking to my declaration that chocolate cake is the best test of a cookbook's quality, i started here



and it was delicious



although it may have been even better had i not been such a dummy. see, unlike the other two mug cake books i have used, this one goes ex vitro: you make the batter in a bowl and then you pour it into a mug. which = more work and more dishes and kind of goes against the whole raison d'être for mug cakes, but whatever. this one called for 2 eggs, beaten, so i beat the eggs in one bowl and mixed the rest in another bowl (it also calls for melted butter, if you're keeping a tally of how many dishes we're dirtying), forgetting to add the beaten eggs to the concoction. the mug had been microwaving for 40 seconds before i noticed, yelled FAAAAAAAAACK, and mixed the half-hot batter and beaten eggs together, hoping that food science was looking the other way. it still tasted fine—better than the other book's chocolate cake, but yeah.



i'm why i can't have nice things.

BUTTERSCOTCH



the swollen explosion of this one is all on me. all of the recipes in this book make 2 servings of mug cake; the batter is meant to be divided into two mugs for sharing or for ambidextrous gluttony. but for those of us on a mug-cake-a-day path, that is too many mug cakes! going forward i’m gonna try to just math it out, but this time, i made the full quantity, and once i had filled the fox mug halfway, the remaining batter seemed scanty, so i decided to make one big mug cake instead of one regular cake and one miser’s cake, and that’s the story of that.



it may not be the prettiest cake on the block, but we have that in common. another thing we have in common is that we are both full of artificial butter flavoring.

CHOCOLATE-COVERED CHERRY

the author says this is "a perfect quick dessert for a romantic Valentine's Day dinner," so i made it in the sexxiest mug i own—one that greg made just for me featuring one of my veryfirst crushes.



such a flirt!



this one was slightly dry—i think i overmixed the batter and mary berry would be very disappointed with me, but the admiral—



the admiral forgives.

CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER



see, i made it in TWO mugs





this one contains peanut butter AND peanut butter cups for doubleplusgood mug-caking. there's not much else to say about it. peanut butter. chocolate. duh.

CLEMENTINE



this is my favorite one so far, oh boy! so citrussy and zesty and spongetastic! I can feel the scurvy leaving my body and that other trendy illness of the moment reconsidering its approach.



come at me, corona-bro.

BLUEBERRY-WHITE CHOCOLATE



no, wait, THIS one is my favorite so far. it's a blueberry masterpiece, a white chocolate revelation, but pro tip: microwaved blueberries are the hottest things there have ever been, so be patient. don't burn your mowf.



and if you are ever in andover, maine, go to this restaurant. they have excellent hash. not THAT kind, ya hippie. although...yeah, probably also that kind.

DOUGHNUT



i decided to do this one in a bowl instead of a mug, to make it more doughnut-round instead of cylindrical, and ta-daaaa



i liked this one a lot; it was very nutmeggy, but maybe a little dry. i can fix that for next time, though. all of these recipes i'm making are the 'basic' ones, but each also has a few suggestions to zazz 'em up—with toppings and add-ins and glazes and ganaches. i'm testing to see if they're worth the extra effort of adding the zazz; if they can stand on their own. this one, well, i would definitely fold chopped apple pie filling into it.

RASPBERRY-COFFEE CAKE

look at that little bloop of escaped raspberry!



this was very yummy and sticky, but it definitely needs a 'sweet vanilla glaze' to make it register as coffee cake.



i don't care, i ate it all up and now i have to go to work through a forest of tainted subway poles, licking raspberry jam off my fingers, and i hope you are all enjoying your relaxing quarantines.

LEMON-BLUEBERRY



now, i have already declared both clementine and blueberry-white chocolate to be my favorites, so what happens when i combine the clementine-adjacent flavor of lemon with blueberry? does it become my ultra-favorite?



no, but it's really goddamn good! and another excellent way to ward off illness; all that vitamin c and superfruit magic wending its way through you. i'd meant to make a more st. patrick's day-relevant mug cake for today, but all the bars are closed, parades and free book depots cancelled; celebrating would feel like a SHAMrock.

CHEESECAKE

i decided to go mugless again in order to give the graham cracker crust its time in the spotlight. along with, apparently, these mucusoid smears of cheesecake on an inexpertly wiped glass.



i do not endorse microwave-cheesecake. the flavor is good, but the texture is too compressed and firm for cheesecake. still, add some jam, no one’s complaining. and if they do, they can go shelter in place elsewhere.



MAPLE-BACON

go home, fort vancouver regional library mug—you're drunk!



and this is what happens when you try to cram it all into ONE mug because you've accidentally scooped most of the bacon out with the first glop of batter and you think, "well, i don't want just a MAPLE mug cake!" which is silly, because it would have been delicious even without the bacon. this is like a delicious, somewhat runny, mcgriddle.



i love this. i even love the half-baked puddle. i might make it the exact same way next time. AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME!

PINK CHERRY

sorry, the world falling apart was a bit of a setback to my mug cake project and i got behind in my posting, but here we go again!



so pink! so cherry!



this one was nice and light and sponge-y and ALSO very healthy because it is egg-white only and maraschino cherry juice counts as a fruit.

PEACH COBBLER



i mean, who doesn't want need an individual portion of cobbler every once in a while? i personally would have added some cozy notes of cinnamon, and ice cream is a must for next time, but individual cobblers for quarantine? i'm living large.



BANANA-CHOCOLATE-PEANUT BUTTER

Q: is this my favorite flavor combination of all time?
A: always and forever



no surprise i loved it enough to make an additional cake out of it, intentionally underbaked for that smooshy, raw-but-melty cookie dough appeal.



and then i quarantined it all up in my tummy. to keep it safe.

APPLE CRISP

this one isn't a cake, obviously, so i can't expect that it will rise or anything



still, there are some things that don't benefit from being made quickly in a mug and apple crisp is one of those things.



there is not nearly enough butter in this recipe so it's like eating hot flavored dust on top of unpeeled apples and if that's your thing, you can break quarantine and come get it. and, YES, i do have a library card mug on top of a library card backdrop because NERDTHEMES.

HOLY COW! (exclamation point [sic])

the author explains this cake's name: A cake so rich and so good that when you bite into it, you'll exclaim, "Holy Cow!" which seems awfully specific, and i did not. it's good, but it's also very involved, for a mug cake whose ONE JOB is to be quick and unfussy



you make the batter in a bowl, pour it into a mug, nuke it and poke holes in the top



then you pour on the salted caramel sauce which you have made from scratch



then you pour on the condensed milk which you have bought like an aristocrat



then you wait for it to absorb a bit. it will not absorb much



then you eat this concoction that is filled with chopped-up butterfingers and drenched in a viscous layer of tooth decay and you fondly remember the time before 'rona, when you were allowed to go outside any time you wanted and the grocery stores always had bread AND eggs at the same time.

WHITE CHOCOLATE-RASPBERRY

RAAARRRR



risking white chocolate backlash from the white chocolate NAYSAYERS, i made this.



and it was delicious. say what you will, this makes top 5. almost out of room here, so that's all for tonight!

OATMEAL RAISIN



look at this perfect scoop!



this one is a keeper, and it's another one you can pass off as health food—oats, raisins, brown sugar, egg, milk, flour, butter—so much food pyramiding is occurring here! i did stray from the directions a bit, though, because quarantine or no quarantine, there's no universe in which i spend time chopping 1/4 of raisins into four pieces each.

COCONUT





coconuts. delicious. more words later.

i'm out of room here—sadface—but i can at least post the pictures of the last batch of QUARANTINE MUG CAKES and maybe i can talk about 'em over on blog or something. enjoy these here for now please!

MAPLE-NUT





CHERRY LIMEADE





WHITE WEDDING CAKE





i have finished this project and review here: http://bloggycomelately.com/absolute-...

come to my blog!

[karen]

okay, i'm not here to do a whole three-part mug cake project like i did over here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

but i did use this book to make a mug cake yesterday, so i might as well post it and if, in the future, more mug cakes get made, well that will be just fine and i'll share 'em just the same.

so - yesterday, i made a german chocolate mug cake for connor's birthday. belated. i was away.



mise:



this is a "dump in a bowl" cake, not an "enjoy from the mug" cake, so -

DUMP!



DUMP 2!



different approaches to whipped cream application



this was a fun 'welcome back to mug caking' for me. there were some hiccups - i had to go to a whole 'nother state for the chocolate, there was a CARAMEL EXPLOSION in the microwave while i was making the salted caramel sauce, also a cooking spray-nozzle mishap and a lot more dishes than you'd expect for a three-bite cake, but it tasted great - very dense and rich and plenty of flavor. mug cakes are always a little more trouble than they're worth, but when they taste good, you can overlook the fact that it would have taken the same amount of effort to make a fullgrown cake.

belated birthday boy was pleased. and that's all that matters.

and - because the mug itself is at least half the fun, and because i used two that hadn't been used during mug cake project #1 WITHOUT EVEN MEANING TO - here they are:

for my cake



for connor's cake



but what's this?



another cat?



it's the mug that keeps on giving.

but is, sadly, now empty of mug cake.

i will probably make more from this book, but because i want to, not because some project is bossing me around...

come to my blog!

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good recipes, somewhat kitschy blurbs above the recipes. All of the cakes use self-rising flour which is a pain to do conversions for if you don't have any.

[Edith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book on the fine art of making mug cakes. Most of the recipes are good, depending, of course, on the quality of ingredients used, and the care with which one makes the recipe. I found, in general, it was better to stick to the recipe as written, rather than improvising using ingredients one has on hand. For example, in the Mocha Cake recipe, instead of using espresso and coffee granules, which I did not have, I used Starbucks unsweetened Cold Brew coffee. I think the recipe would have been better had I used the espresso and coffee granules.

The recipes were a little bit more involved than your usual mug cake recipe, which usually calls for all the ingredients to be mixed in a mug. These recipes require you to melt butter in a microwavable bowl and then mix the ingredients, then pour the mix into a mug (I prefer to use a bowl - it's easier to get out all the crumbs, and easier to clean). So it's a little bit more labor-intensive than your typical mug cake. However, the results are tasty and enjoyable.

One caveat about this method is that you will need a microwavable mixing bowl to melt the butter, so you can just add the ingredients and mix them in the mixing bowl with the butter. I do not own microwavable mixing bowls, so I had to use a separate ceramic bowl to melt the butter, and then pour it into a metal mixing bowl. Another thing you should know is that you must allow the butter and the other ingredients to come to room temperature in order to mix them together. Otherwise, the warm butter will curdle when it comes into contact with cold ingredients, like milk or eggs from the refrigerator. Yeah. Please feel free to learn from mistakes I made in my haste to eat a tasty snack!

There are a variety of options for special diets, including gluten-free, paleo, and vegan diets. The author also gives you a variety of ways recipes can be changed (adding chocolate chips, fruit, etc.). She has a number of categories of recipes, such as fruit-based recipes, birthday mug cake recipes, holiday recipes, recipes for chocolate-lovers, and so on.

If you like mug cakes, you will be sure to find recipes here that you can add to your repertoire to enjoy yourself and share with family, guests, and friends.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, the recipes have been spot on in terms of the cooking time and flavour. My kids are very happy with the whole thing. Only time will tell if it keeps up and is truly the best mug cake cookbook. But it doesn't have pictures which speaks volumes because most of my really good cookbooks and baking books are light on visuals.

I did have a hard time tracking down self-rising flour, but I finally found some and so the testing began. Looking forward to trying the cherry limeade.

If you like making mug cakes and want a collection of tasty recipes in one spot, I'd recommend this one. It's not too fat to take up a ton of space .... I've tried to find recipes that I like online and books I can borrow rather than buy, and came up empty handed .... I had a few recipes online that I tried and wasn't happy with ....

[Gail Zoppa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Recipes, Especially Gluten Free Options!

Great recipes for anyone wanting a fresh baked dessert in a short amount of time. Many quick fixes for sweet cravings made with common ingredients found in your kitchen. I was especially grateful for the recipes given for gluten free options for flour substitutes as well as sugar substitutes.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

So many great recipes to try!
I checked this out from a library to use for a teen program at my branch. The author uses mainly self-rising flour and I don't want to do a pre-mix because the number of teens who come to programs varies wildly. I need recipes with regular flour, but will make some of these at home!

[Meri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Measurements and ideas for recipes are great. I scaled back the amount of butter on some. Mug cakes are the perfect answer to having a cake-like dessert only one night versus making an entire cake you have to eat for the next five days.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best mug cupcake books out there. I've been making recipes from it for years. No fancy ingredients are called for and there's a wide variety of delicious, easy recipes for two people.

The vanilla recipe is so simple it takes only a few minutes to make and it's yummy.

[Otto Testla · Rating 5 out of 5]

っggjgf

[L Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mmmm, yum, what more can i say..

[Kristen Barenthaler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only real problem is choosing which one to make first 🤔 The recipes all sound delicious and simple. Who doesn’t want a personal cake made from scratch?

[Gail Ouellette · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a lot of recipes not just for cakes, but cookies, puddings even quiches and more. Nice when you want something easy and just for one and in a hurry.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has made me mug cake addict. Lots of good tips to go with.

[Storywraps · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mini cakes baked from scratch? In a mug? Who'd have thought it would be so easy to do and so tasty! All you need is a mug, some simple ingredients, your trusty microwave and a few minutes...then voilá...yum yum time!

The cookbook is easy to read with photos added in for your visual pleasure. The book includes the basics, classics, seasonal and holiday themes, plus options for gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, paleo and vegan diets, so you see, everybody wins.

There are Troubleshooting tips and many creative ideas for mug cake activities, gifts to give, and unique mug parties. How fun is that? And the icing on the cake? Yes they thought of that too: recipes for icing, pudding and even quiche. Make your kid's next party or sleepover a hit by offering them mug cake, or how about a girl's night in and everyone makes their own favourite mug cake?


Not enough options to satisfy your sweet-tooth cravings? No problem. There is included in the book a creative guide to developing your very own mug cake recipes. Everything about mug cakes has been packaged, wrapped up and tied with a big red bow, the perfect Christmas gift. All is just waiting for you to open up that delicious present and unleash a baking adventure extraordinaire! Fun for the whole family and beyond!

[Channon Coats · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Mugging Miracle!

Okay, five stars would be better, but it would certainly apply if I could make beautiful what is fun and serviceable. The star that is missing is microwavability of beautiful amazing cups to effectively showcase a gem, a life-saver of a dessert. My granddaughter loved the chocolate lava cake. We made them with King Arthur's black cocoa and Lindt caramel choc squares, because that is what we had. "Superb!" she lisped through her missing front tooth passage. Quite unique, I thought, as the recipes are that elastic. Easy peasy! Caveat: the specifics of recipe, such as self-rising flour are absolute. Melted unsalted butter: iron-clad command for melted and unsalted. You can use coconut oil if you have a taste for it, but FORM rules. Lovely. Fast. Impossibly delicious. Even tho microwaved, a chef's unmitigated kitchen sin, it works charmingly. We are off to pancake and bacon ourselves, Mug appetit!

[monica l williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

The absolute best mug cakes cookbook is so fun!

This cookbook was such a fun easy read! I really enjoy everything about this book. It explains how to makes these yummy personal sized treats and include remedies for common mistakes. The cookbook even includes recipes for frosting, pudding and quiche. Each recipe is super quick for the prep and cook time. The book includes beautiful pictures of these delicious desserts. The mug cakes are great for anyone who is health conscious or just needs a quick sweet treat. I think this is great for kids sleepovers or a girls night in! Every recipe includes easy steps to follow and ingredient alternatives. I definitely recommend this book. I received this book for free.

[Ginger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Mug Cake cookbook is the most read book in my home. My boys grab my Kindle on a daily basis and are forever making a cake. They are trying out different options and I am going to be getting them the print version soon before the ruin my case on my Kindle. I am so thankful that we are no longer making the same boring cake on a daily basis.

[Vicki Scullion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, so I actually made mug cakes for myself and my husband the day I started to read this book. The chocolate cake was fabulous, and now I can't wait to try another recipe. I'm hooked!

[Tom Martin]

Quick and Easy

Great recipes sure to keep the little ones entertained. Easy and fast to make. Simple cleanup and all the recipes we tried taste good too.