Making dinner for two isn’t terribly difficult. It’s made easier by focusing the meal on a protein, a veggie and, on occasion, a starch. But desserts for two are a little more tricky, since most recipes are designed to produce an entire cake or pie or batch of cookies–more than we can eat, and certainly more than we need to have on hand. There’s always ice cream, of course, and you won’t find me turning down a bowl very often. But once in a while, you need a cozy something sweet.
Enter: mug cakes. If you’ve spent any time on the Internet, you’ve no doubt seen a recipe for “brownie in a mug.” There’s also a plethora of recipes for “chocolate lava cake in a mug,” “eggless Nutella cake in a mug,” and various other things of that ilk. In other words, chocolate desserts. I have an on-and-off relationship with chocolate, and at the moment we’re taking a break. Tonight I was in the mood for something light and lemony, so I started with this recipe and dialed up the lemon flavor.
The recipe below is for a single mug cake–that’s because I eat a gluten-free diet, so I made mine with a gluten-free flour blend and my husband’s with regular all-purpose flour. (They both turned out perfectly.) If you’re making two mug cakes with the same ingredients, you can just double the amounts and split the batter between two mugs.
It would be easy to dress up this recipe a little–add a spoonful of cherry pie filling to the top of the cake (cherries and lemons are wonderful companions), or add a dollop of whipped cream. You can also make some extra lemon glaze and toss a few blueberries with a spoonful of that mixture, then add those to the top. Finally, you could add a spoonful of lemon curd to your mug while the cake is still warm and create a single-serving lemon pudding cake.
I like this recipe just as it is: light and lemony, a sweet way to end a summer day.
Lemon Mug Cakes
For each cake:
3 T. flour
1/4 tsp. baking powder
3 T. sugar
1 large egg
2 T. vegetable oil
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3 tsp. lemon juice
Zest of half a large lemon
For the glaze
Powdered sugar
Enough lemon juice to create a pourable consistency
Coat the inside of a 16-ounce mug with cooking spray and set aside.
In a small bowl, measure the dry ingredients and stir to combine with a fork. In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Use the same fork to whisk them together.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredient and stir thoroughly. Pour the batter into the prepared mug and microwave for 90 seconds.
While the mug cools a bit, mix together the powdered sugar and lemon juice until the sugar dissolves. Pour the glaze over the top of the warm cake.
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