Variations on a Mug cake (Gluten-free and Vegan options available!)

I've kind of made a recent discovery - I love mug cakes.  They're way quicker than trying to bake an entire cake (along with the risk of me eating the entire thing), but I find that they're so much easy to play with.  I love trying out different ingredients together, and since the ingredients are in much smaller quantities, messing up ingredients is a little more forgiving.  It also allows me to have the illusion that I'm eating something completely decadent, when I really am just sneaking some healthy ingredients in there.  I've used them as a post-workout meal with oats, peanut butter, and eggs (carbs, fat, proteins!).

I've been tweaking several recipes and have come up with two variations that yield a slightly different consistency, but are both wonderfully delicious.

The first version is a bit more brownie-like. It's slightly gooier, and when a bit of peanut butter is added in the middle before microwaving it, it has something like a molten cake consistency.

Look at this.  How does this not make you run to the kitchen and start throwing ingredients together?  You would never guess that it's actually about 75% healthy..

 Read on for the ingredients (and a bonus version!)




For the first mug cake, I used these ingredients for the base:

2 T Coconut flour
2 T GF flour
2.5 T Cocoa powder
2 T sugar
1 T apple sauce
1 Flax egg (or 1 real egg)
3 T almond milk

*make sure when you use your flax egg, you let the ground flax seed/water mixture sit for a few minutes.  (1 T ground flax seed + 3 T warm water is the equivalent of one egg!)

Mix all the ingredients together, and then microwave for 1:30-2:00 minutes.  If you want, add in more chocolate, peanut butter, Nutella, nuts, etc.  I added in half a tablespoon of peanut butter and kind of buried it under a little bit of the mixture to get that lava cake effect. The little chunks in there are little Reese's Pieces that I mixed in at the last minute.  It totally takes away the sort of healthy aspect of it...but hey, I have to do something fun, right?

Result?  Chocolate-peanut butter heaven.

 

Yes.

This second recipe was a much more cake-like recipe....mostly by accident. I started adding oat flour before realizing that my previous recipe only had coconut flour, but I was pleasantly surprised by the results!  It reminded me of a blend of a muffin and a cake - it was slightly dense, but I didn't feel like I was eating a brick.  I kind of made this recipe by acciden.  I attribute the cake-like consistency to the oat flour, which helps create the fluffy texture while the coconut flour gives the cake its density. 


But....I think the most impressive of this cake is the POOF! I'm pretty sure it's just because I didn't use a large enough mug, but the fact that it didn't explode and spillover in the microwave made me feel like a genius. 

I definitely enjoyed the results tremendously. It was decadent and filling, but I didn't feel heavy or too full after I ate it. It's totally different from the previous cake in that it was dryer.  It works because I now have two different cakes for two different moods...

2 T. oat flour
2 T. gluten free flour
1.5 T coconut flour
2 T sugar
1/2 t. baking powder
2.5 T cocoa powder
1 T applesauce
1 egg (or 1 flax egg)
3 T almond milk


Same as before: mix everything together and microwave for 1:30-2:00 minute.  Adjust the times for how cooked you want it to be!

 

And one more picture so you can admire how beautiful this was. 

Last thing to do?

Dig in. :)