{Pin Test} 11 Treats in a Mug • The Pinning Mama

Almost everyday I see 3 Minute {Fill in the Blank} in a Mug pop up on my Pinterest feed. Unless you have been avoiding Pinterest for quite a while I am sure you have seen these too! As a matter of fact, I was thinking a while back I should test this and pinned one on my board and it was repinned over 50 times in a matter of seconds! In theory, what’s not to love? A perfectly sized single serving that takes only minutes until I can indulge in a treat out of my favorite coffee mug! In reality though, is it too good to be true? The answer is YES and NO. I tested 11 of these recipes from across the web to let you know which are a little piece of heaven and which one Ashley’s husband gagged on!

Since I am probably the world’s foremost expert in making food in coffee mugs after {too many hours spent} making 11 of them today I thought I might offer some overlying thoughts on making treats in a mug.

I must be the minority seeing as how popular these are on Pinterest, but they just never seemed appealing to me. Something about the idea of microwaving something meant to be baked seems like a bad idea especially for the texture. However I for the most part was wrong here. The textures seem to be fine as long as you keep a CLOSE eye on your mug while cooking and don’t over do it.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. Some of the ugliest were the best tasting and the most visually appealing got spit out!
The time advertisements are very misleading. A lot of these say “2-minute This,” or “3-minute That.” This is referring to the time in the microwave, not total time making. Once you get everything out, mix it all up and cook it I was averaging about 20 min a mug, not including clean up.
You will dirty more than one mug. I was under the impression you would make it all in the mug, but most recipes have you mixing in one or more bowls, using measuring cups/spoons, using other utensils, etc. After making 11 of these I have not a clean dish in the house!
Even though theses are touted as a single serving, based on what I put in them I am sure they are very high in calories and fat grams! I did no formal calculations but 3 tbsp butter, 3 tbsp sugar, 3 tbsp brown sugar, 3 tbsp flour etc would seemingly climb pretty high!
Even when the treats turned out good, I would say that the real thing would definitely be better.
In most every case my opinion is that it is probably just slightly less work to make the single serving in the microwave than it would be to make the treat the proper way. Why spend all that effort making one not-that-great cookie when you could make 2 dozen, eat one, freeze the rest and expend 0 effort the next 23 times you want just one cookie! If will power is the problem, it would probably take you less time to run to the store and buy one cookie that make it in a mug.
When you take these out of the microwave they will be HOT! Take care handling the mug and eating your first bite!
This might be a given, but almost all of these taste significantly better fresh and hot. Don’t get distracted and come back to eat it 30 min later!
Many of the recipes that have a lot of liquid in them will overflow when microwaved. Save yourself on clean up and put a couple of paper towels underneath!
Spray your mug with cooking spray before putting the mixture in it (whether the recipe says to or not) and it will save you significant time on clean up!

In case you haven’t already, you might want to follow us on Pinterest. We are pinning cool stuff day and night! Here are the 11 pins that I tested:

So let’s begin, shall we?

Coffee Cup Quiche

This Quiche in a mug was one of those that was really ugly after cooking. I was very hesitant to stick it in my mouth after looking at it, but surprisingly enough it was pretty good! The cream cheese gave it a little extra burst of flavor and I think the bread helped the texture of the eggs after being microwaved. Although, it puffed up beautifully while cooking, after I took it out it shrank down pretty small and only filled a fraction of my coffee cup and was pretty unappealing. As for taste though, both the hubby and I liked it!

Overall Rating: 4

Baked Oatmeal in a Mug

The baked oatmeal was one of those that I felt like took a little more work than I, as a busy mom, want to put into making breakfast for one. There were several ingredients and you had to chop an apple and mash a banana in addition to the other prep. It isn’t overwhelmingly hard but you won’t find me spending time to do this on an average morning in our house. The taste though? Fantastic! This recipe would get the award for tasting most like it was made to be cooked in the microwave! No funny texture issues here! I will say, as much as I did like this, if you aren’t an oatmeal person, this isn’t going to change your mind.

Overall Rating: 4

2-minute French Toast in a Cup

I had high hopes for this one… I really did! I love french toast and it seems like it would be pretty good even in the microwave. It didn’t deliver though. I think part of the problem was that the directions were, to be frank, pretty poor. There was no complete recipe written out so you had to scroll through the post to figure out what ingredients you needed and the amounts. Then there was some confusion with how it was written on the quantity you use in one mug v. two. So I did my best to decipher the code and it really looked beautiful as I put everything together and even while it cooked. After it cooled and deflated I was left with a rather dense piece of french toast that only filled a fraction of the cup. The taste was pretty decent, however the texture was very eggy and I would have preferred more cinnamon. I really think this is another that would have been just as easy, if not easier to just throw a piece of bread on the griddle and make some real french toast, which in my opinion is way better!

Overall Rating: 3

Coffee Cup Coffee Cake

This Coffee Cup Coffee Cake was pretty good! I was really impressed with how much I liked the texture of the cake! The cake itself didn’t have much flavor, but what won my heart over was the crumb topping! It was amazing! When you took a bite of the soft cake with the flavorful topping it really was a treat! I thought it might be too much topping for the small amount of cake batter but it ended up working well since the middle of the cake baked up and moved some of the topping down the sides.

Overall Rating: 4

Banana Bread in a Mug

I have to say, when I pinned this I was looking for a fail! I thought it looked DISGUSTING in all of the pictures! Especially in the ones where they took it out of the mug. But as I prefaced earlier… Looks can be deceiving! This was pretty good banana bread! It made the biggest quantity of any of the recipes and was enough for a snack for 3 adults and 2 kids! I think Ashley’s daughter was its biggest fan! Now do know that again, if you took this to a banana bread competition it definitely would not win a ribbon, however considering you made it in minutes in the microwave, we were all pleasantly surprised! We had to laugh though because like the pictures we saw online, we did pop it out of the cup (it was no problem since we sprayed it with cooking spray) and it looks pretty weird! We texted a pic to a friend and asked her to guess what it was. Her answer: A foot scrubber thingy. Yes, a good laugh! Since now you are dying to know what it looked like… here’s a pic.

Yummy right? Good thing we didn’t judge a book by its cover!

Overall Rating: 4

Cinnamon Roll Mug Cake (made in 3 minutes!)

This was one that wasn’t horrible enough to spit out, but at the same time I will never make it again. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t good. I am a big fan of Classy Cooking, the website that this recipe came from, however this just didn’t do it for me. The cinnamon flavor was really strong. I thinks the frosting would have helped balance it but I really didn’t like that either. The texture was fine but nothing about it was really good. In my opinion, blah! Don’t make this one!

Overall rating: 2

Minute Microwave Cheesecake

We have arrived at the treat Ashley’s husband gagged on! At first we thought it might be a texture thing so we put it in the fridge to cool and set a bit longer. Didn’t help! 4 people tried it 0 people liked it. If anyone ever tells you to put cream cheese, an egg, some vanilla, lemon juice, and sugar substitute in the microwave and then eat it, just don’t! Major FAIL!

Overall Rating: 0!

Instant Mug O’ Mac & Cheese in the microwave

I really don’t know how something so seemingly simple could go so wrong! It sounded good… just like Kraft easy mac. Put liquid in the noodles, microwave to cook, add cheese and milk, nuke again. Simply put, a disaster! The cooking of the noodles went fine and it was downhill from there. Once I added the shredded cheese and milk and reheated it just did not work. The cheese was melted but did not incorporate with the milk and instead sat on top. When I tried to give it a good stir the cheese all stuck to the fork and avoided the noodles like the plague. You can see the big clump of cheese in the picture. To make it even better, the milk didn’t absorb and everything was sitting in a milk puddle. Fail. MAJOR FAIL.

Overall Rating: 0

Chocolate Chip Cookie in a Cup

I thought this chocolate chip cookie looked pretty promising. The dough came together nicely and it called for lots of chocolate, a plus in my book. The end result though, not so great. Looks pretty, tastes like bland with chocolate. Again, it isn’t that I wanted to spit it out, I just thought in no way was it worth the effort of getting everything out, mixing everything up and cleaning it all up, not to mention the calories for the bland taste and weird texture.

Overall Rating:1

Microwave Brownie in a Cup

I probably should have realized after the cookie that making a brownie in a mug from the same site would be a mistake. But I didn’t. And it was. This didn’t even seem promising as I was mixing it up. It was about the consistency of play doh when I was instructed to plop it in the mug and nuke it. Pretty gross, both for taste and texture. There has got to be a better brownie in a mug recipe out there!

Overall Rating: 1

The Best Ever Molten Chocolate Cake Ever – In Less Then 2 minutes

Well, we saved the best for last! This was probably my favorite of the bunch. It is another ugly duckling. It was the last one I made but even after being pretty full, the one I am still nibbling on {many} hours later as I write this post. This produced a really dark, rich, chocolate cake. Although the molten center comes from chocolate you stuff in it afterwards and not true molten center, it matters not because it was delish! Even with this, I would still say the original is better, but this is a pretty nice second!

Overall Rating: 4.5

So now that it is all said and done, what do you think? Will you be trying any mug treats in the near future?