If I'm being honest, I used to be a real food snob. I went to culinary school and cooked in a restaurant for a while, and even before that, I was raised by parents who love food and cooking. My bar is pretty high, and I used to think that in order to be excellent, a dish needed to have the freshest ingredients or a long preparation or a perfect presentation.
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Then I settled into adult life, with a full-time job, friends I wanted to spend time with, and hobbies and responsibilities that meant spending the majority of my time outside the kitchen-even as someone who still makes a living cooking and writing about food.
And I realized: If I, a food writer, can't even get it together to bake a cake or a batch of cookies on a weeknight, the majority of people definitely can't be bothered with lengthy dessert recipes on the regular.
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I'd seen mug cakes on Pinterest, and I'd always dismissed them as kind of lowbrow and, well, weird. To be fair, plenty of them are. It takes a little fussing to write a good mug cake recipe: It needs to be moist but not soggy, springy but not eggy, and fluffy but not overwhelmed by the flavor of baking powder.
But I've learned that it's absolutely possible to make a legitimately tasty in-a-pinch dessert with just a mug and a microwave. Are they as great as something you'd spend an hour (or more) beating and baking? Nah, but they're still delicious, and most nights you just don't have that kind of time.
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If you're seriously in need of dessert but don't have the inclination to bake, here are 13 delicious microwave mug cakes you can turn to again and again.
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