Eggs. Always Use Eggs.

I learned an important lesson today. Cakes made in cups require eggs.

I have a recipe that makes a pretty decent cake. You assemble your ingredients in a coffee cup, you microwave it for three minutes and presto! Cake done. Like I said, it's a decent cake if you're craving dessert/chocolate and there's nothing else to relieve your craving.

My parents have been camping over the last week. They went grocery shopping and amassed a huge bill. So they say. When they left, they took pretty much all the food with them. Not that I minded for the first few days. I got to practice my cooking. But by Thursday... there actually wasn't anything to cook. Thankfully, my parents returned Friday. Though they brought back a decent amount of food, they did not go shopping. As of today, we have no bread, no eggs, we don't even have parsley. Parsley! Really?

Of course I would have to get a craving for chocolate. I stupidly started assembling ingredients. And then I remembered. No eggs. Well shit. I made a few quick substitutions that I'd tried in previous recipes. Yeah... that was a bad idea. I think the egg does stuff that I'm not aware of. In my defence, the batter looked fine. Normal even. When I put it in the microwave however, it became less of a cake in a cup and more of a cup in a cake. It was kind of fun to watch overflow. To every parent who has ever made a baking soda volcano, this recipe works even better when you mess it up. That is my contribution to science. So it wasn't a complete waste. It's funny because if this had happened last week, I probably would have burst into tears. Today I just laughed. I gave up, pulled it out of the microwave and just stared at whatever the hell my batter had become. It was a slimy, shiny, sticky black mass that sort of smelled like chocolate. In short, not very appetizing. And trust me, it tasted gross. Yeah, I tried it. After all that I figured I might as well.

(This one isn't mine. Mine was somehow worse... if you can imagine...)

Obviously I declared it inedible and threw it out. As I was washing the cup, and plate, and the cutlery I'd used to remove it from the cup, it reminded me of tar. It just globbed together and stuck to everything. I vowed to only try the cake again when we had eggs.

So, cakes in cups need eggs. Don't try any fancy substitutions. You'll end up with nasty black crap on your hands. Although, now that I'm thinking of it, it could have been an awesome prank prop. I always think of these things too late...

If you want to see what it usually looks like here's a successful attempt.

Lauren.