My sister introduced me to this brownie in a mug recipe because she is the bestest sister ever. I tried it out today and it’s everything I imagined, even if I did it “wrong.”

Here’s some pictures:

That’s everything you need for brownie in the mug, well, almost:

1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp cocoa
Pinch of salt (not pictured ’cause I usually don’t bother with it)
Pinch of cinnamon (original calls for a tiny pinch but I was a lot more generous.)
1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp oil (not strong flavoured, according to the original recipe)
1 to 2 drops vanilla extract

Basically, put it in the mug and mix, then stick the whole thing in the microwave.

I mixed the dry up first, since my sugar is pretty lumpy at the moment (apparently no one ever told my boyfriend that one must actually keep the sugar container sealed…).

Then added the wet. If you’re like me and use a pipette to handle “1 or 2 drops” lest there be a vanilla disaster (yummy but expensive), you can rinse it out using the water that’s going into the cupcakes anyhow.

And mix. Bubble bubble, toil and trouble, eh?

Since there’s no egg in this recipe, you can lick the spoon (well, fork in my case). This is a good way to test if the pinch of cinnamon was really enough. In my case, it was, but I’m thinking next time it’ll be cinnamon and cayenne for a mexican mug o’ brownie. Can take the gal out of New Mexico, but you can’t take the New Mexico out of the gal, eh?

So from there, you stick it in the microwave and cook it. The original recipe says 1 min 40 sec worked for them. I decided to try 40s to start (since my new microwave is huge) and got this:

Now if I was sensible, I’d have put it back in and finished “baking” my brownie in the mug. But instead, I thought, “hey, there’s no egg, and that looks like it’d be delicious…”

And thus was born “chocolate lava cake in a mug”

Warning: even at 40s cook time, this was crazy hot. So hot that I wrote most of this post waiting for it to cool.

Now, while this brownie/lava cake was everything I wanted right now, I’m apparently not capable of making anything without contemplating ways to make it different, so here’s a list…

Other things I’d like to try:

There’s no reason you have to stick with vanilla extract. I’m going to try a few others since I have them: mint, cherry, banana, maybe root beer since it’s one of the many extracts we have in the house.

As I said, I think this would be really excellent with a bit of cayenne to make a Mexican-style chocolate. I’ll bet it’d be nice with a bit of ground ginger, too.

Chopped peanuts (or other nuts) would probably be amazing on top. Why not make a whole sundae out of it? The original recipe recommends ice cream, even if I didn’t have any on hand, having just moved. I bet sprinkles would be fun if you’re doing it with kids, just don’t add them ’till after the brownie is cooked.

Chocolate chips might work in the mix. I’m worried it might be overkill, but there are days where overkill chocolate brownie sounds like exactly what I need.

Finally, my sister had warned me, and she’s right: this makes about twice as much brownie as I actually want. So next time, I’ll also be cutting the recipe in half. For reference, here’s what my next attempt will look like:

Small brownie in a mug

2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp cocoa
Pinch of salt
Pinch of spice (cinnamon, cinnamon+cayenne, ginger, etc. Optional.)
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp oil (canola or veggie oil, not olive)
1 to 2 drops extract (vanilla, cherry, whatever)

Cook time will decrease accordingly.