FOODIE FRIDAYS: Add Pizazz to Your Celebration With 'Cake In A Cup'

For Mother's Day, I was spoiled nicely. One of the gifts I received was a beautiful hand-painted mug from Jaimie along with a recipe for 'Cake In A Cup'.

I'd never heard of it before and never thought you could bake a cake in a cup. I was picturing a crusty cake-like blob with raw batter in the middle. Not my idea of yumminess. But I was surprised!

We didn't do the recipe for Mother's Day but saved it for Steve's birthday and, surprisingly, they turned out really well.

So I thought I'd share this wonderful recipe with you. This is also a great fine motor skill activity where you can get your kids to paint their cups and have them spoon out all the ingredients! It's messier but MUCH more fun. Enjoy!

What great fun this is! I also thought this would be a great activity for a Birthday Party! Each guest could have their own cup and make their own cake with choices of toppings and flavors! (Be sure to use 'brain friendly' flavors, though. ;) )

The first thing you need to do is find as many mugs as you have cake eaters. They have to be microwavable because the last thing you want to do is clean half-baked cake batter and mugs pieces out of your machine.

If you want to paint the cups first, there are some great, safe paints you can get from Michael's or another local craft store. Then you simply paint them, 'fire' them in your oven and they're good to go. Or you could simply find a cup from the Dollar Store.

Here's the recipe (bear in mind that you GF/CF people out there will have to tweak this to your tummies. We had to tweak a few things too due to allergies.) :

Cake In A Cup
(These ingredients go into each cup.)

4 tablespoons of flour
4 tablespoons of sugar
2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa/pudding mix/carob powder or similar items
2 tablespoons of milk (whichever kind you drink)
3 tablespoons of oil
3 teaspoons of carob/butterscotch/vanilla chips or whatever you prefer
splash of pure vanilla (NOT extract!)
2 tablespoons of whisked egg (optional but it makes the cakes softer)

~ Add all dry ingredients to the mug and mix.
~ Add milk, oil and egg (if you're using it).
~ Add your chips and vanilla then stir well.
~ Microwave 3 minutes (1000 Watt oven) to 4 minutes (700 watt oven) on medium.

DONE! It might overflow but don't panic as it collapses back down when it cools. As a sidenote, I found three-and-a-half minutes was perfect.

Let us know if you try it.