Maple Spice Microwave Mini Cake

Ah, October. The humidity is down for now, the air has cooled a little, it's been sunny and pleasantly breezy. It almost feels like fall...at least as much fall as we get here in Florida. Naturally, it's also the time to start thinking about fall foods. Like spice cake.

I've mentioned a few times about the “Meal Deals” that my local grocery store has. A fairly frequent one is buying some bacon and getting pancake mix and pancake syrup free. We go through the pancake mix and bacon a lot quicker than we do the syrup, and it's starting to pile up. So I decided to try something with it.

I know very little about replacing sugar in a recipe with maple syrup. It's not my family's favorite, so it's not something I've tried before. But still, this is a microwave cake. I figure if I messed it up, it's small enough to not make a fuss over.

I took my base recipe from one of my favorite food blogs, Kirbie's Cravings. There aren't a whole lot of mug spice cake recipes out there, so I started with her “Light Strawberry Mug Cake” and swapped the pancake syrup for the sugar and added the spice, omitting the strawberries. Yes, I know you're supposed to reduce the liquid. I didn't.

The cake itself came together nicely. I noticed two things baking it, however: One, it took a lot longer – almost two and a half minutes – to microwave. For two, it was very dense. It almost had a pudding like consistency. This was mentioned in Kirbie's original post on the recipe, so I can't necessarily blame that on too much liquid.

Still, I can have my cake and eat it too. I topped it with about a teaspoon of cinnamon sugar for a little extra oomph. Yet neither myself nor my mother could taste maple (granted I didn't use real maple syrup), and it wasn't very spicy either.

Anyhow, the recipe I used:

Maple Spice Microwave Mini Cake

Adapted heavily from Kirbie's Cravings

Ingredients:

5 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup pancake syrup (use real maple if you have it, but otherwise the blends will do)
1/8 tsp baking powder
1 egg
5 tablespoon nonfat milk
1 tablespoon oil
1 tsp cinnamon

1tsp Pumpkin Pie spice

1tsp cinnamon sugar (optional)

Directions:

1. Combine all ingredients except cinnamon sugar. Stir until smooth. Spray a microwave-safe 2 cup ramekin or oversize mug with baker's spray and pour in batter
2. Microwave for 1 minute 30 seconds. Continue in 20 second intervals until cake tester inserted in the middle of cake comes out clean.
3. Invert ramekin over a small plate and top with cinnamon sugar, if desired.

Dense and non-spicey-maple-y as it might have been, it still tasted good. I'm going to keep this in the play-around with file. That is, if I don't find another recipe I have to try first.