Whittard of Chelsea have set bloggers like myself a challenge. Come up with a recipe for a cake that you can make in a cup and cook in a microwave. The idea is to show that it’s possible to have fresh delicious cake even when you have absolutely zero desire to do a load of baking. I thought I’d take it a stage further and try for a recipe that you can make without any equipment other than a cup, a teaspoon (or 2) and a microwave. So if you’re feeling like death warmed up and want something to give you a hug why not try my honey and lemon cake in a cup?
Ingredients:
Amounts are for a large teacup cake – to give an idea of size my cup holds 400ml when filled to the brim
2tsp Unsalted butter or margarine
4tsp Runny honey
1 tsp golden castor sugar (or any sugar you have to hand) plus 1 tsp to decorate
1 egg
5tsp Bottled lemon juice
Or fresh but I’m going for the least effort possible. If using fresh you could add a little grated zest for an extra zing.
4 heaped tsp Self raising flour
half tsp baking powder
3 tsp Whole Milk
Method:
- Put the butter into your microwave safe cup and melt on full power. For me this takes about 25 seconds but if you’re not sure use 10 second bursts. (Margarine will probably melt a bit faster). Stir with your teaspoon to melt any lumps.
- Add 4tsp of honey to the melted butter – you should find that the honey slides easily off the spoon because it’s still coated with the butter.
- Add the tsp of sugar and mix until the sugar and honey are dissolved in the meted butter.
- Add the egg and mix until well incorporated. If you have a handy fork this works well but it’s perfectly possible to mix it with the teaspoon – it will just take a little bit longer.
- Add the lemon juice one teaspoon at a time and mix into the batter between each spoonful.
- Either wipe your spoon or use a clean teaspoon toΒ add 4 heaped tsp of self raising flour and half a tsp of baking powder. Again if you mix between each spoonful it will help stop lumps forming.
- Stir until the batter is smooth then add 3 tsp of milk. The batter should drop easily off the teaspoon.
- Set your microwave to 80% power and cook for 3:00 minutes. The cake should bounce back to the touch but will be quite pale as microwaves don’t add colour the way a co nventional oven would.
- Sprinkle the top with a teaspoon of sugar. If you used fresh lemon juice you could add a little zest as well.
I am entering this post into the Whittard Cake in a mug blogger carnival & linking it up to recipe of the week run by the lovely amummytoo.co.uk
What a flipping brilliant idea! Lovely little effort cake and lemon & honey is a perfect combination now the Autumn chills are here! Putting this on my to-do list π
What a great idea – so simple but looks delicious!
What a lovely idea! π
Great idea – it’s something I’d be happy for my daughter to make on her own as no gas oven to contend with!
What a great idea! Love it π
Cake in a mug? What a wonderful idea! That seems really easy as well, so I’ll definitely be giving it a go.
Nipping over from Recipe Of The Week.
Ooo that looks tasty! As someone without an oven I give this a double thumbs up! π
I love this. It sounds like a great recipe and the photo styling is brilliant π Thanks for linking up to #recipeoftheweek. Pinned and Stumbled and also featured in my top 3 showcase π Do please join in again x
Oooh that sounds lovely. I am all for something that is simple and yummy π
Are the measurements supposed to be in tsps, not tablespoons? Because 3tsp = 1Tbsp and the liquid measurements seem off.For 5.5 tsps or just under 2 Tbsp, how can you have so much liquid -14 tsp (4Tbsp+) + egg (4Tbsp)? I tried it as per the instructions and it was a liqudy puddle after microwaving. I then removed the egg and the milk leaving honey, butter and juice as the only liquids and it was much better. Butter isn’t technically liquid but even if you remove it from the equation the dry/liquid proportions don’t seem right.
Hi, sorry you had trouble with it. Tsp is teaspoon, I added quite a bit of lemon for flavour, you could add less if you prefer. You can see from the photo the consistency I ended up with π the egg changes its structure when cooked and binds the cake batter together so I would be very averse to removing it. Milk is usually used to loosen a batter that is too thick so if it is already runny you could leave that out. You could also add a little extra flour to thicken it if you like.