The Mug Cake Rant

No. No. No!!!

I see that the day has finally arrived. From the very moment Club mentioned on the Discord that mug cakes might be added to the arsenal of Tattered Weave recipes, I knew that doom was coming to Hope, that it would spread throughout the Enchanted Forest, that many of you would fall willingly into the grasping arms of these deceptive recipes.

Mug cakes are an abomination. They are dark magic in the realm of bakery. Microwaved tea was bad enough, but now this?!

You should not have done this.

Mug cakes, *microwaved* mug cakes, almost any food which is cooked with a microwave instead of by normal means is a disgusting creation which should never have existed.

Why, you ask? Because it comes out as soggy, rubbery, scalded mess at best. And at worst? Ohohoho, you do *not* want to experience an exploding batter firsthand. Never again.

It is my moral duty to protect you all against the horrific creation that is mug cakes.

I was like you, once. Innocent and naive. I saw a random Buzzfeed video and thought "Oh, that looks cool! So cute and trendy! Why don't I give it a try?"

It was the biggest culinary mistake I have ever made. Worse than carrot salad. Worse than yoghurt and turmeric cake. Worse than pig's blood curd sandwich. So, so much worse.

It doesn't matter if they're virtual food on a pet site. Do not underestimate the pain they cause. It is impossible to cook them properly because of their fickle nature. They are floury, rubbery, and tasteless, but a few seconds more, and you suddenly have smoke and burning smells gushing out as soon as you open the microwave door.

And what’s the deal with putting them in mugs, anyways? I see so many baking blogs praising them as perfect and healthy portion sizes of cute cake you can have ready in two or three minutes. What’s the point of it all if it comes out tasting disgusting? Anyways, if your goal is to be healthy, a little thing like disgusting cake is not going to change your lifestyle for the better.

(Side note: If you want portion-sized cake, cut it into slices or separate the batter into muffin moulds. Then put it into the oven. The oven. Emphasis on *oven*.)

More on the mugs: why mugs of all containers?! Of course, it does look cute- but only if you disguise the mess with a bunch of icing, sprinkles, and carefully angled, naturally lit photography. Furthermore, why, just *why* would you want to eat cake out of a difficult-to-clean cylindrical container? The mug cake sometimes shrinks away from the edges if you’re lucky, but that presents problems within itself. For one- cake is not supposed to shrink! The texture issues continue to grow.

You could tip the thing out of the mug onto a plate, but that just makes for a sorry mess. Slather all over in icing to hide it if you want, but the sad facts of your mug cake will still remain.

If you want a good cake experience, you should bake a proper, full-sized cake to eat on plates in *slices*. That’s right- slices are simply a superior way of eating proper cake.

Allow me to demonstrate. A slice is a triangular wedge, like so:

The striped area indicates where the icing would be. When eating the slice, you can cut along the red dashed lines with your knife, to get a bite of cake with a good ratio of icing. You can enjoy the additional sweetness of the icing and the crumb of the cake at the same time. However, with a mug cake, this is what you are forced to endure:

You must use a small spoon or tiny fork to scoop up irregular bites. What’s worse is that you must first bear the pain of an initial wall of cloying sweetness- the icing. Then you’re left to deal with the rest of the icing-less mouthfuls of mushy sponge.

“But Quinineer!” one of you protests, “What if we don’t use icing?”

It still doesn’t matter. There are many other deciding factors into why proper cake is vastly superior. Including but not limited to: texture, ingredients, ingredient ratios, etc. etc. The poorly thought out method of presentation and experience is merely salt in the wounds.

Also, just to say- I am not a bad baker or an incompetent cook. I do not hate mug cakes because I cannot follow instructions. It's simply the truth. I have tried so many recipes for microwaved desserts- vanilla cake, banana bread, berry cobbler, chocolate flavoured, peanut butter flavoured- too many to list. Ultimately, they end up tasting of pain and tears, or not tasted at all in the cases of several which had liquidised and overflowed the mug.

The ones which survived to tasting are like sea sponges disguised as cake- where is that luscious, fluffy crumb of a butter or white cake? Where is that dense richness of a banana loaf? The structure is often full of many small, open holes approximately 5mm in diameter, which collapse easily due to the excessive moisture. The water within the batter was not properly absorbed or evaporated like a normal cake. So instead of something moist and fluffy, you get a squashy mess.

Some recipes recommend not to use much or any egg to avoid rubberiness, but that’s no improvement. The microwave destines the entire thing to fail.

Please, I beg of you- do not be fooled by the mug cakes.

You *don't* believe me? Well then let me explain something- one of the reasons why microwaved cake is decidedly not delicious: The Maillard Reaction.

It is a crucial chemical reaction that takes place at around 140 to 165 Celsius. This reaction not only creates a browned colour, found on many baked goods, it also produces *hundreds* of flavour compounds integral to the breads, biscuits, and cakes you all know and love.

But does a microwave supply you with this delicious and deliciously scientific result? No!!! What a microwave does is piss off the water molecules in whatever you're nuking to heat it up. And because agitating water molecules only does so much, it is quite rare for food to be heated more than 100 degrees Celsius.

So no cake for you.

Just a soggy, limp, cupful of gurgling batter.

Would you boil cake batter or bread dough? Would you? Because if you said yes to that rhetorical question, then microwaved mug cakes are for you!

Congratulations, I hope you enjoy scraping amorphous, sticky goo out of your favourite mug.

Look, I can't stop you, but this is just a warning, okay? Sure, it might be convenient if you're starving, but a rushed excuse of a cake isn't worth the effort.

I'm not trying to bash the microwave- it has its uses. It is a wonderful way to reheat things, make quick oatmeal, heck even some impromptu “baked” fruit is fairly decent. I love my microwave. It heats thing evenly and conveniently, and is also the most accurate clock in the house. But mug cakes? Microwaved bread? Please. Just let the oven do its job.

Baking is an art and a science. It's about slowly nursing a starter to full health, it's about spending *time* kneading dough for that perfect rise, it's about finding relaxation in the process and reaping in the delicious rewards.

And a haphazard, two minute mix of ingredients just can’t measure up.

Quinineer, out.

This post is not meant to be taken super-seriously, and was made in jest. Please don’t get mad at me. That being said though, I do strongly recommend just straight up making a cake in the oven for your own sanity.

Additional note: this was written in 2017 and without context, it lowkey looks like I was not fully sane when I wrote this. Let's just say that I had a lot of time to kill and the concept of copypasta + food pedantry floating in my brain; inspired by that one reddit grilled cheese rant.

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