Amma usually made a cake for our birthdays-mostly a vanilla sponge cake with butter cream icing topped with  ‘hundred and thousands beads’. In keeping with this ‘tradition’ November is a month of cake! With four people in my life having a birthday this month, equals a cake every week! This month I will share some of Amma’s cake recipes and a few new findings too. The first cake recipe for this ‘month of cake’ is the simplest one (Happy Birthday S!)- but also dubbed the ‘most dangerous cake’-  one can have express chocolate cake-or double chocolate cake within 5 minutes. I have tried two of these deadly ‘5 minute chocolate cake recipes’- the first is a regular chocolate cake and the second is a low carb version (minus the chocolate topping ) pictured below.

Five Minute Chocolate Cake in a Cup

This cake has several names – the 5 minute chocolate cake, cake in a mug or cake in a cup or sometimes the one minute cake due to its cooking time in a microwave. The original recipes use quantities for a large coffee mug and recommended that the cake mixture fill no more than 2/3 of the mug.

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons whisked egg
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 3 tablespoons chocolate chips or chopped chocolate
• half teaspoon Vanilla essence

Method
1. Apart from it’s 1  minute cooking time, the method is one of the simplest – simply mix all ingredients in the cup you intend microwaving the cake in.

2. Cooking time may vary depending on your microwave. The original recipe recommends 2 min 30 seconds-on high power. The full original recipe can be found at Instructables.com.

Tips:

1. Although the recipe
recommends mixing all ingredients in the same cup you intend cooking
the cake-it is best to use the ‘traditional method’ of mixing the egg
and sugar with the milk and oil-then combine the dry ingredients to form
the cake batter. The first time I made this cake I mixed everything
together-the result was inconsistent cake batter and a very unpleasant
bottom layer of flour and egg-I recommend mixing ingredients in a
separate bowl.

2. This recipe recommends’ tablespoon of flour-it does not specify heaped or not-I used leveled spoons.

3.
The cooking time indicates 2 minutes on high power – I used 1 minute 30
seconds using 700 watts power – this seemed to work quite well.

5 Minute Cake vs 30 Minute Cake?

Though the recipe may be
simple – I would rather take a little more time to bake a  cake ‘the old
fashioned’ way – rather than this express version, which although
tastes good, tastes more like fudge pudding rather than a cake. It
definitely makes for a good express desert idea not for a cake.

Low Carb Chocolate Cake in 2 Minutes

In case you are counting calories then try this Low carb Chocolate cake in a cup-similar to the Atkins Muffin in a Minute-except this recipe uses almond powder instead of wheat bran and sweetener instead of sugar and excludes oil. The original recipe can be found at www.genaw.com. My version of the cake is no longer low carb with the addition of the chocolate topping.

Tip: Cook in a microwave for 1-2 minutes-1 minute on high power. I cooked mine for 2 minutes on 700w.

The Low Carb 5 minute Cake tastes much more cake like than the recipe which uses flour. The almond flour gives the cake a much more crumby rather than pudding like texture of the first recipe.