Christmas Mug Cake

Christmas Mug Cake

I’m a little late in posting this one – I got to that point in the holidays where I forgot what day it was! That sounds a bit like bliss: getting so lost in time off that you forget where you are, but for control-freak me it’s more of a sign that I’m spiralling downwards. I’ve been really lucky that since going to Uni I’ve been feeling fairly stable and happier than I have in a long time, however since coming back home things have been roller-coasting like crazy. It feels a little weird writing about it here as I know this content gets out to friends and family more than anyone else, and this isn’t something I’d normally discuss with them, but when I changed the angle of this blog I said I’d be more open about my mental health and so I guess that’s what I’m doing.

I know I’ll be ok, and I know this is just a phase, but anyone who’s been in this position themselves knows that it doesn’t make living it any easier. At the moment I have very little motivation to do anything, but I’m lucky that I used my normal crazy energeticness before to make some recipes I could use for times like these. So I made this a while ago, and I also wrote a long post on our Christmas cake tradition in my family, however it feels like a bit too much of a jump between what I wrote then and what I feel is appropriate now to write. But here we go…

Does anyone else have that thing where the Christmas cake is made in October, fed till December, and then eaten slowly until August? Every year we have the panic in our family of hitting December 23rd, realising we don’t have a cake, having a debate over if we do make a cake whether anyone would it eat it anyway, concluding no one probably would, then making one. And alas, it gets picked at over the following months, just to get finished off late August so we can have a few Christmas cake free months before the cycle repeats.

Now I love Christmas cake, I really do, but at Christmas. The spices, fruit and marzipan in a cake just seem out of place when eaten un-surrounded by Christmas trees and mistletoe. So I decided to bring the essence of the Christmas cake into a mug cake so it’s super easy to make, doesn’t require too much forethought and serves a single person! All the spices, all the fruit, all the booze and even a chunk of marzipan in the middle, but none of the paph and palava.

Recipe

Serves 1

Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 tbsp Butter
  • 1 tbsp Brandy
  • 1 tsp Dried cranberries
  • 4 tbsp Raisins
  • 4-5 Dried Apricots
  • 1 Egg
  • 3 tbsp Brown sugar
  • ½ tsp Mixed spice
  • ½ tsp Ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract
  • 1 tbsp Self raising flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1 tbsp Glace cherries (about 5-6)
  • 2 tbsp Almond, roughly chopped
  • 25g Marzipan

To decorate

  • 1 tbsp Icing sugar, mixed with ½ tsp water
  • 1 tbsp Apricot jam (optional)

Method

  1. Grease a 350ml mug with butter.
  2. Put the butter, brandy and fruit into a mug and microwave for 10-20 seconds until melted.
  3. Add the egg, sugar, spices, and vanilla and beat together with a fork.
  4. Add the flour, salt, cherries, and almonds to the mixture and mix until combined.
  5. Roll the marzipan into a ball and push it into the centre of the cake.
  6. Cook the mug cake for 3 minutes until it comes away from the sides of the mug slightly and is cooked through.
  7. Brush the cake with the apricot jam and then decorate with the icing and water mixture. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

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