Adventures in the Kitchen: Nutella Mug Cake

Gary is away on business and baby is down for the night, so I decided to experiment a little bit in the kitchen to kill some time and satisfy my craving need for something sweet. I googled a recipe for Nutella mug cake, as I have Nutella on hand and know that you can use apple sauce instead of egg or oil in sweet baked treats. I typically have tons of unsweetened apple sauce on hand, as I make it home made for Daniel.

One mug (one of my favorites, a gift from a friend when I was going through a rough spot a few years back), less than 10 ingredients, 5 minutes or so to single-serving bliss. I omitted the cocoa but added peanut butter, should have thought about tweaking the dry ingredients and amount of olive oil I used but hey, we're experimenting remember?

So I mixed the wet and dry ingredients separately, popped it in the microwave for a few minutes, wished it luck and despite the intense heat the little cup of cake "batter" endured, so hot it did not do:

 Yeah...

Oh yeah. Still raw, a term I use loosely since there aren't any raw ingredients in this besides the milk. I proceeded to eat it as-is, mixing it into this delightfully messy, gooey mass of sweet goodness, but I got to thinking, maybe I can rectify this none-cake? So I cut the batch into two 8 ounce tea cups, added a tablespoon and a half of flour to each cup, one ice-cube size amount of apple sauce to each and zapped it.

Eureka! Cake!...? I took one tiny nibble and it's grainy, duh, I already partially cooked it once. My name may be Julia, but my last name is not Childs.

Verdict: INCREDIBLE taste, potential for greatness and I am definitely trying this again. But after working on it for an hour for naught, I have come to one single conclusion...

This was way easier.