Recipe: Mug Cakes and Cookies

I have a sweet tooth. It could really be described as an addiction. It's habitual, definitely dating back to my early childhood years of dunking Keebler Fudge Stripes in milk, dismantling Oreos to eat away the white icing, and drizzling chocolate sauce over my ice cream.

Not everyone in my household shares my sweet addiction ::cough:: ::cough::, the husband.... But luckily the interwebz/Pinterest is a blaze of glory with all of these microwave mug/ramekin recipes sprouting up everywhere lately. 

This is a good thing. I am a semisweet chocolate chip person, whereas he is a milk chocolate chip person. If you didn't know there wears a difference, well, I didn't either until I met him.

It also mean I can have my cake and eat it too, and not worry about the rest of the "cake" that only I would be eating. Or the cleanup.

So, I had a chocolate raspberry mug cake a la mode, and I made a chocolate chip cookie (milk chocolate chips of course!) a la mode for the Husband. 

For the mug cake, I didn't have apple cider vinegar (okay I did but it had weird floaty things in it and no longer smelled eatable) so I used balsamic vinegar. It whipped up in two minutes, but I didn't follow the instructions- I plopped a scoop of Dulce De Leche ice cream on the cake and devoured its ooey, chocolates bits.

The cookie was just as easy, the only thing I strayed from recipe wise was adding another tablespoon of brown sugar (but that's just a taste preference). 

All in all, home runs. No eggs. No bowls of batter. No sticky hands. No waiting for the desert to bake while you snack on cookie dough/batter then 20 minute later are no longer hungry for the desert you set out to make.... (is that just me?) 

Really, if your mug is big enough you can make the cake in one mug. The cookie can definitely be made and cooked in one dish (microwave safe of course!)

Happy Sweet Eating!

Recipe: Birthday Donuts

My Birthday was in May. It was a little hard, being away from all of my friends and family, but even with the distance I still had a great birthday. It ended up being a Birthday Week as packages trickled in.

I have complained about the weather (or lack of sunshine) for a long time (3 months?). I am just not used to it [Sorry Minnesota, not trying to bash you, given this is an off year for ya, but PERK UP! rain everyday is no fun either!]. I never had to savor the sunshine before. It was cloudy days I looked forward to in Fresno. Days to be huddled up in blankets with my dogs and a good book, or a marathon of some teenie-bopper show (think 90210, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars that are all about the drama). I am not supposed to want to do that every day!

My mom and sister sent me an assortment of my favorite Fresh & Easy  snacks, some Armenian treats only to be found at Hye Deli's (which last I checked, aren't anywhere in Minnesota), like Pekmez, Halva, and little pistachio candies, and some clothes.

My in-laws sent me a gorgeous bouquet to brighten my desk at work. That was a wonderful surprise!

My best friends absolutely spoiled me. California and sunshine were a theme across the board, hands down.


A new key charm for my keys, so that the sun is always with me.

A bottle of wine (that actually benefits shelter dogs)

Fresh organic strawberries. From California. Over-nighted. Hands down, the best strawberries ever - no sugar needed, we devoured them by the bowl-full and I froze what we couldn't eat.

Lastly, the Hubz took me to an acclaimed Steakhouse (review to follow), over the weekend. On my birthday day I baked a loaf of bread, and he made me Fettuccine Alfredo, with Angel Hair. We drank a really good Tobin James Silver Reserve Petite Syrah and watched the Life of Pi - and he got me Luigi's Haunted Mansion 2 (I love nintendo).

So I wasn't going to have a cake, because I would be the only one to eat it. [The Hubz only eats cheesecake, and peanut butter cookies my baking endeavors are wasted on that man.] Cupcakes were out of the question because I lost my cupcake tin in the move across the country. So I decided to make these mini donuts.

And glazed them in a chocolate ganache that I whipped up:

2 cups semi sweet chips

1/2 cup half and half

2 tbs butter unsalted ***

Use a double boiler or place a heat proof owl over a pot of boiling water and mix ingredients until it becomes melty chocolate goodness.

The recipe makes a lot of donuts so I took a plate to work and froze a gallon baggy worth of them (frozen cake with icecream is pretty much ice cream cake, right?). 

***okay so make sure your butter is real butter. Here, it's so hard to find butter that is just pasteurized cream/sweet cream; almost all have "natural flavors" which, to my taste buds, make the butter taste like margarine. It's not my cup of tea.

Wine: Hess Select Treo 2010

We made trip to the Hy Vee Liquor Store on Saturday. There are Alcohol Restrictions in this state that I am just not used to. Alcohol (more importantly, Wine) isn't sold in Grocery stores. You have to buy it from a liquor store, which is adjacent to the grocery store.

I was pleased to see the familiar names of La Crema, Two Vines, Columbia Crest, Seven Deadly Zins, and Gnarly Head. Even more pleased to see a good selection of Hess; we shared a bottle of Viognier with some friends a while back.

So, looking at me dead on was a Treo, a Merlot, Syrah, and Petite Syrah blend. And I made the choice, at 16.69 a bottle (very reasonable in this region even after shipping costs, don't you think?). And it was a good choice. I mean, I am feeling homesick for California, and how much more California can you get than a wine from Napa County?

This blend was magnificent. It has a very peppery nose. But surprisingly, its finish isn't so dry: cherries and blackberries coat your tongue and throat and give a nice mellow, rich fruit finish. No, it's not sweet or jammy (although I akin jammy wines to the Shiraz Varietal specifically). But it does pair amazingly well with dark chocolate chips (cacao!, more specifically Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Baking Chips. Don't judge me! I eat chocolate chips out of the bag. a lot.), and dulche de leche ice cream. And a good movie [The Perks of Being a Wallflower ].

The equation for a good evening in?

A little bit of Napa + Chocolate + a Good movie