Secret Recipe Club: Single Girl Brownie Cake

This month for my Secret Recipe Blog I had Pale Yellow--a lovely little blog with recipes ranging from vegan to, well, not vegan. The recipe that first caught my eye was this delicious looking "cheese" ball--a vegan cheese ball that Tracy admits is a perfectly delicious dip, but doesn't taste like cheese. That made me like her immediately. I love a lot of vegan food, but I don't like it when people act like vegan knock-offs (say, vegan cheese or brownies) taste just like their non-vegan counterparts. They're not. Which doesn't make them any less delicious. Just different. Anyway, I really really wanted to make that vegan cheese ball--I even bought the raw cashews for it. However, Tracy had just posted it and I wanted to give some time to one of her older recipes. Then I found this "Single Girl Cake"--a single-serving cake that is not in any way vegan:). Balance, that's what I say. It was also delicious. To me it tasted more like a brownie (or maybe a nearly flourless cake) than a regular cake. I ate it with all the fixings, including some of those raw cashews I'd bought (is it wrong to use the raw cashews intended for your vegan cheese ball on top of a homemade brownie cake? Probably. I did it anyway.)

I love that it was single serving. I have a special place in my heart for single-serving treats even though I'm in a family with four kids and a husband. Often I don't want to have a whole pan of sweets just sitting around my house for days. Often I make something just for me (yes, I do). This week my kids were still loaded with Easter candy (of which I didn't have any), so I didn't feel too bad hogging my own little brownie.

Single Girl Brownie Cake
from Pale Yellow
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes (yes, it took nearly as long as regular brownies; I don't know why)
Cost: $.45
butter: .10, chocolate chips: .22, egg: .10, sugar: .02, flour, .01

1 Tbsp butter
1/4 C dark chocolate chips
1 egg (I used a small one; a big one will make for a spongier cake)
4 tsp sugar
pinch salt
2 drops vanilla
1 tsp flour

Preheat oven to 350. Spray or butter the inside of an oven-proof mug (or any single serving oven-proof dish like a ramekin).

Put the Tbsp butter and chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl and microwave in 20 second intervals, stirring in between till it's all melted (it won't take long).

Whisk the egg and the sugar, then pour in the melted chocolate mixture. Add salt, vanilla, flour, and whisk.

Pour into your dish and bake. The original recipe said 10 minutes, but mine took nearly 20. I'm not sure why. It seems it should have cooked sooo much faster, but it just didn't. When a fork comes out clean (and it's puffed and the center is just barely more underdone-looking than the sides), it's done. Like this:

Eat warm or cool.

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