Cuppa Cake (Sainsbury’s) [By @cinabar] [@SainsburysPR]

Cup cakes are seemingly big business at the minute, with even Selfridges now selling ‘designer’ cup cakes in their food hall. Apparently (i.e. according to Wikipedia) the name of cup cakes originate from 1796 where they were first described as “a cake to be baked in small cups”, so this could be seen as going back to their roots... as this cookery kit allows you to cook the cake in a mug. Who am I kidding – it’s a microwave cup cake for goodness sake not gourmet baking. :-D
I think the target market for this box set must be students. It’s cheap and easy to prepare, and all you need is a cup, some water, an egg and a fork, basics even a student should have. I actually love the simplicity of the kit though. Inside the box are two sachets of powder, you put one in a mug add an egg and a drop of water, whisk and when it looks smooth-ish its time to cook it. By ‘smooth-ish’ mine never went that smooth, mostly because there are chocolate chunks in the contents but I did my best. Anyway after you have completed the minute or so of preparation you then stick it in the microwave and huzzah one freshly baked cake! It raised a fair amount during cooking, but didn’t quite look as fantastic as the one on the box. There were however optimistic fresh baking smells coming out of the microwave.


The next stage was the eating part. I have to say I was a little confused to see that each mug is supposed to serve two, and that half a serving has 250 calories. I don’t want to shock you guys but I had a whole one to myself, because I’m a rebel like that. That’s 500 calories all to me, which if it had been combined with ice cream or custard makes for a very high calorie dessert...
Texture wise it was a little firmer than most sponges, but not rubbery at all. The top half of the cake was sweet and lightly chocolaty, but the flavour was mainly toward the bottom of the pudding. All those chocolate pieces in the mix hadn’t risen during cooking and had stayed toward the base, making it get progressively more chocolaty the further you ate downwards.
I said it at the start, and I’ll say it again this isn’t gourmet cookery, but it is a lot of fun. It is really easy to prepare and nice tasting too. In fact it’s really good considering the minimal effort!
To be honest if I was having it again I would add some (microwavable) custard just to moisten the sponge, but that will get me feeling guilty for eating a double portion again and thinking about calories. If you were making this – would you share your Cuppa Cake, or do you think it should be a single serving too?

By Cinabar