One more Cake-in-a-Jar
You can find many ‘cake in a mug‘ recipes on the internet. BUT, I prefer a jar. It’s is more basic and because of the high shape even better. If you make it yourself (instead of buying cakes or cake mix) you can control the ingredients, add favourites and you’re cheaper of too. The healthier your ingredients, the healthier your cake.
Microwave?
It is meant to be made in the microwave, I’m ambivalent about the pro’s and con’s of microwaves. But ‘hey!’, this is an emergency recipe.
The ultimate flexible cake in a jar recipe
| Ingredients | Variations,tips and alternatives |
| 4 tbsp all- purpose flour | The better the flour, the better the cake. It can be dark flour (all-grain), white, corn starch, almond-flour or any mixture of these. |
| ¼ tsp (teaspoon) baking powder | Unless the flour you use already has this in it. |
| 4 tsp (teaspoons!) granulated sugar | Or dark sugar, or maple syrup or palm sugar. Don’t use honey, it will loose all its goodies when you heat it. |
| 4 tbsp milk | Or water or cocos milk or almond milk |
| 3 tbsp peanut butter | Or replace it partly with butter, cocos oil, almond butter, cashewnut butter . . . (Beware most peanutbutter contains a lot of salt and sugar! That’s why there is no extra salt in this recipe.) |
| 1 egg | This is not necessary but I added it for Proud to make it more protein rich. |
| optional: 1 tbsp superfood | Add 1 spoon oat flakes, seeds, berries, choc nibs, (hemp) protein powder, a squashed banana . . . go wild. Combine any of these and add 1 tbsp to your batter (not a lot more, otherwise the structure might get out of balance). |
| MICROWAVE time: | Depending on the power (Watt) and -condition- of your microwave. This may vary a lot! |
| approximately 1 minute | If it comes out too smooth (cake not done), add another 10 or 15 seconds. If it comes out a bit dry-ish, give it a few seconds less the next time you make this recipe.Don’t eat it before having waited 1 minute! The heat can be distributed very odd in the jar, you don’t want to burn your mouth! |
Prepare cake in a jar
In this recipe you just have to mix all the ingredients with a fork (or spoon).
Last note on the physics and chemics of baking
If your peanut butter is really cold and hard to mix, you can preheat the water, milk or other liquid you use. In that case you need to be sure that the flour or egg only gets added when the batter is on room temperature again. The heat only gives a physical reaction with the peanut butter (it melts). But when you add heat to starch and egg-white it will change (chemical reaction). We want that only during the oven/ microwave phase of the making a cake process 😉 .
Smakelijk eten !
One last lessons about baking powder and baking soda. Baking soda is much stronger than baking powder. More important, baking soda needs a bit of acid to work well and nót to leave you with that funny feeling on your teeth. This acid can be anything from yoghurt instead of milk, a squeeze of lemon juice or lime, a teaspoon of vinegar to tamarindpaste.
