Do you crave sugar when you’re exhausted? I do. And I’m not alone.

There’s a physiological reason: When we’re tired, our “hunger hormone,” ghrelin, increases, making us feel hungrier, and our “fullness hormone, “leptin,” decreases, making us feel less satisfied when we eat. Making matters worse, exhaustion triggers our bodies to our crave quick sources of energy, typically in the form of carbs and sugar.

Which is why, as a not-very-good sleeper who is often exhausted, I rarely keep cake and cookies in my house.

Exhaustion => Sugar Binge

So consider the predicament an exhausted, health-conscious woman found herself in at 10 a.m. last Monday morning, when she’d been up since 3 a.m. worrying about:

  • The State of the World,
  • Whether she had enough sweet potatoes for that night’s chili dinner,
  • If she should get a measles vaccine booster,
  • If the electrician would show up at 4 p.m. as promised … you get the point.

After lying in bed with monkey-mind for three hours, the (fictitious) exhausted woman finally got up at 6 a.m., ate a sensible breakfast of WASA whole-wheat crackers with a schmear of peanut butter, homemade chia-blueberry jam, extra blueberries on top. By 10 a.m. the nagging whisper in the exhausted woman’s brain, which had been on an irrepressible loop since the moment she’d finished her sensible breakfast, had escalated to a full-blown, amplified scream:

The answer was at my (fictitious) fingertips; I remembered a blog post I’d written a few months earlier, Guilt-Free Desserts. Using pantry staples, I could fulfill my sugar/cake craving without leaving the house: Mug cake.

Five minutes later, sitting cross-legged on my sofa, focused on a warm mug of gooey, chocolate goodness, I closed my eyes and savored every spoonful of my newfound fudgy happiness. It was like a mini-vacation.

If you don’t spend a ton of time on social media, chances are you may have missed the mug cake craze. (I did). They’re single-serving, and baked in a microwave — which left me skeptical. I shouldn’t have been.

As it turns out, there are quite a few occasions that call for a mug cake. Here’s my list:
  • You crave cake, don’t have any, and don’t want to go out.
  • You want a single-serving, so that you don’t go overboard (e.g., when that pint of Ben & Jerry’s in your freezer calls your name until it’s gone).
  • You are upset about the price of eggs (mug cakes don’t use them!)
  • Friends show up in the late afternoon for a glass of wine, you invite them to stay for dinner, and realize you have nothing for dessert.
  • Your kids or grandkids want to bake with you, but you want to limit their sugar to avoid them using your bed as a trampoline late into the night.

Recipe Note: My first mug cake wasn’t great. I used a mug that was too small, and cooked it for too long. Use the biggest microwave-safe mug you own, and cook it for a few seconds less than the recipe calls for. You can always put it back in for a few more seconds.

Bonus Content: 5-minute video demonstrating how to make 3 flexible (gluten or gluten-free) mug cakes: Pumpkin, Banana, and Chocolate-Peanut Butter.

Mug Cake Recipes

Chocolate Mug Cake: This is the recipe I started with. And the one that hooked me. Cook it for a few seconds less than the recipe calls for, then put it back in the microwave if it needs a bit more time.

Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mug Cake: Almond flour, almond (or peanut) butter, a few tablespoons of plant milk, and you have a guilt-free mug ‘o delicious in the time it takes to say, “I want some cake!”

Fluffy Vanilla Mug Cake: Get creative with toppings — chocolate chips, rainbow sprinkles, it’s all good.

Peanut Butter Mug Cake: Add an extra dash of protein to your cake, and call it breakfast (perhaps instead of eating it after breakfast? Like a fictitious woman does once in a while?)

Pumpkin Mug Cake: It’s always a good idea to add fiber to any recipe. Pumpkin puree does the trick here.

Apple Mug Cake: A mugful of warm apple cake is good for the soul.