Munchy Monday - Chocolate Mug Cake

My little sister turned 22 today! In honor of her birthday, I made her a cake...and then I ate it.

Sometimes you want just a small slice of chocolate cake, but who wants to heat up the oven, make a huge cake, and somehow keep your fork from helping you devour the entire thing? Alright, eating the entire cake sounds great, but my waistline definitely doesn't need it!

Enter the "mug cake." There are plenty of cake recipes made for your microwave, but I have yet to find the perfect one. There is absolutely no way to use an entire egg and make a small cake still edible! Trust me, I've tried. My new solution: applesauce!

If you make this strategically, you will only dirty a couple of spoons and a mug!

Chocolate Mug Cake
1 Tbl cocoa
8 tsp hot water, divided
4 Tbl sugar
pinch of baking soda
pinch of baking powder
pinch of salt
4 tsp vegetable (or canola) oil
1 Tbl applesauce
1/2 tsp vanilla

In mug, combine coca and 4 tsp hot water. Microwave 20-30 seconds or until slightly thickened and very hot. Stir. Add remaining ingredients. Stir well. Microwave 2-2.5 minutes until cake pulls away from sides. Moist areas may remain but will disappear upon standing. If you have the patience and want to invert onto a plate, wait a few minutes for the cake to cool.

Munchy Monday - Homemade Salsa

Salsa, nothing complicated about it. Then why am I sharing a salsa recipe? Well, because my sister came over and made a HUGE bowl full and we devoured every. last. drop. You know what? Even Peter enjoyed a large amount of it! If it's good enough that my super picky 2 year old will eat it, it's worthy of the blog.

Salsa is completely relative and you can add as much or as little as you would like. Here is what we did.

Nine...yes, NINE Roma tomatoes. Why Roma? They're meatier and super tasty! Why nine? Because we're little piggies when it comes to salsa. Dice as small as you can. The smaller, the better. You want the chip to get as many little tasty pieces of veggies as it can!

One green pepper. Seed and chop just as small.

3/4 of a large red onion. A red onion makes all the difference! There's a trick to cutting these that my sister just taught me today. If you don't care about this whole salsa thing, memorize this onion cutting method. I can't believe I never thought of this!

Peel the onion and cut across, but NOT all the way through.

Cut in the opposite direction to create small, perfectly diced sections. Brilliant! Now why didn't I think of that???

You can add a jalapeno pepper as well, but we decided to keep the salsa as kid friendly as possible.

Mix in a teaspoon of dried cilantro (it's cheaper than the fresh stuff, but that would be great as well!) and 1/4 cup lemon juice. And enjoy!!

How did we eat our HUGE bowl of salsa? By the spoonful, with chips, and I even made a baked potato!

I think I'll make an omelet for breakfast with the small amount that we had left...