Chocolate Peanut Butter Mug Cake

This chocolate peanut butter mug cake is loaded with the delicious flavors of peanut butter and chocolate. Topped with whipped cream and mini morsels, it's a delicious, decadent dessert that's ready in minutes! It's the best use you'll ever make of your microwave.

I love any kind of cake. Sheet cakes, layer cakes, cupcakes. If the word "cake" is in the name, I'm a fan. You just can't beat a moist, tender cake topped with frosting or glaze. It's the perfect dessert for everything from weeknight dinners to special occasions like birthdays and holidays. It's a dessert that we all know and love.

When I say I love cake, I mean I really love it.

I remember helping my mother make cakes for special occasions. I even remember helping her make them for the occasional weeknight dessert. I always had so much fun helping her measure out the ingredients and mix everything up.

They were some of the happiest times of my childhood, so for me, cake is equal parts delicious flavor and sweet, sweet nostalgia. Over the years, I've made all kinds of cakes from simple sheet cakes to complicated layer cakes - some of which I'll never make again they were so complicated.

Of all the cakes I've made, I have fallen in LOVE with mug cakes. I even have an Air Fryer Banana Mug Cake you can make in your air fryer that is also worth a look.

However, this chocolate peanut butter mug cake is by far one of my favorites. It's just so easy! This recipe takes next to no time at all, and it always comes out perfect, which is why I'm so glad to be sharing it with all of you.

A Long Road to a Short Recipe

In my opinion, mug cakes are one of the greatest food innovations in modern history. I mean, a simple, single-serve cake that can be made in only a few minutes? It really doesn't get any better than that!

It's a long road from the beginning of cake to making mug cakes in a microwave, but it's one that I want to take a brief look at. After all, where would we be without cakes? Birthday parties would be far less amazing. So would most holidays.

I think we all owe it to the cake to take a look at where it came from and how we got to mug cakes.

The History of Cake

Traditionally, a cake is a sweet baked food made from flour, sugar, and various other ingredients. In their oldest and simplest form, cakes were actually modified bread.

These days cakes are made in more ways than you can count, being as simple or as complex as the baker wishes. We even call certain dessert cakes that aren’t actually cakes, strictly speaking.

The cake has been around for centuries. The word cake itself is actually Viking in origin, coming from the ancient Norse word kaka. Ancient Greek called this baked good plakous. Believe it or not, Romans called cakes placenta.

Cakes remained nothing more than sweetened bread even until their earliest appearance in England. The first “modern” cake, the sponge cake was invented during the Renaissance period. Most food historians agree that this probably happened in Spain.

The History of Mug Cake

If making the mug cake is easy, tracing its origins is equally as hard. Believe it or not, for a cake that emerged in the prime of the internet information superhighway, no one really knows where mug cake came from.

No one has ever taken credit for making the first mug cake, but one of the earliest video tutorials for it emerged in 2009 on YouTube. The entire video is devoted to a woman testing out a mug cape recipe from an email her friend sent her.

She didn't believe it would be good, but by the end of the video she was sold on the ability to make a moist, delicious cake in less than five minutes.

To this day, no one has taken credit for this delicious cake variation. In this day and age, that's the biggest mystery of all!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Mug Cake

This chocolate peanut butter mug cake is rich, moist, and so good. It's an honest to goodness chocolate cake in a mug with a peanut butter center!

This decadent dessert can be made in just a few minutes, making it perfect for an afternoon snack, fun weeknight dessert, or even as a fantastic party food. Whatever the occasion, everyone always loves this cake, and the ease of making it is something you're going to love, as well.

I make this cake quite regularly, whether it be for my family or just myself. I've even been known to make it as a midnight snack when the craving strikes me. That's the great thing about this mug cake. It's an actual cake, and you can make it any time you want. Use this power responsibly!

Ingredients

It only takes a few ingredients to make this delicious chocolate peanut butter mug cake. These are all basic baking ingredients that almost everyone has in their kitchen, and what's even better is that it takes a minimal amount of each because you're basically making one piece of cake in a mug! Take a look.

• milk
• vegetable oil
• brown sugar
• vanilla
• flour
• cocoa powder
• baking powder
• peanut butter
• mini chocolate chips

See? I'm willing to bet you have all the ingredients needed for this recipe in your kitchen right now just waiting for you to make a mug of cake just for you. Go on. You deserve it.

Making Chocolate Peanut Butter Mug Cake

Making this delicious mug cake is just as easy as getting the ingredients from the pantry. It takes next to no time at all to make this easy recipe. In fact, you'll be in and out of the kitchen in just about five minutes! You'll find the complete recipe with amounts in the recipe card at the end of the post, but the simplified recipe below will give you a great idea of just how easy this recipe really is.

• In a small bowl whisk vegetable oil brown sugar and vanilla together.
• Add flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder. Whisk again.
• Pour batter into a greased coffee mug that holds at least 10 oz. Drop peanut butter into the batter.
• Sprinkle chocolate chips on top.
• Microwave for 80seconds or until the cake is set.

Tips

Recipes don't get much easier than this mug cake, but just like anything simple, the devil is in the details. There are a couple of tips here that will help ensure you make the best mug cake possible for yourself, your family, or your friends. These are all very simple tips but they make a big difference so be sure you give them a look.

Make Sure Your Mug is Big Enough

Although it's a simple recipe, this is a cake. It will rise. To make sure it stays in your mug and doesn't end up all over your microwave, be sure to use a mug that's a minimum of 10 ounces. Any smaller and the cake will overflow as it rises, making a mess all over the turntable of your microwave.

Grease the Mug

While we're talking about the mug, make sure you grease it. You might be eating this cake straight out of the mug, but you still don't want it to stick. You want every bite to go in your mouth! Be sure you thoroughly grease your mug so that the cake comes out easily and nothing sticks to the sides or bottom.

Don't Overcook It

Because you're microwaving this mug cake, it can be easy to overcook it. Begin with the 80 seconds listed in the recipe and check to see if the cake is set. If not, add another 10 seconds or so until the cake is fully cooked. Be sure to take note of the final time so that you can use that time the next time you make the cake. The less you have to stop the cooking process, the better.

Variations

You can do a lot with this simple chocolate peanut butter mug cake! The great thing about mug cakes is how easy they are to fiddle with. The base cake is a simple chocolate cake recipe. It's easily varied with just a few tweaks. Likewise, you can use different fillings in the cake, as well. It's a very simple process.

Change the Cake

You can take this simple cake recipe and change it into almost anything. Leave out the cocoa powder and switch the brown sugar to white sugar to create a simple vanilla cake. Take that simple vanilla cake and add flavor extracts to change the flavor even further. There are all sorts of flavored extracts out there, and you'll find them all in the baking aisle at your local grocery store.

Change the Filling

It's so easy to change the filling of this cake! Make a simple chocolate sauce and pour that in the center. Try adding jam to the center if you opt for a vanilla cake. Feeling like s'mores? Take a little marshmallow and then peanut butter to the center to create a s'mores flavor! Half the fun is experimentation.

Serving Chocolate Peanut Butter Mug Cake

Just like everything else with this recipe, serving this cake is super easy. Just take the mug out of the microwave, and you're all set. Top it with some whipped cream and a few min morsels, and you've got yourself a complete dessert. It's the perfect weeknight dessert or addition to any get-together. It's a fun way to put a new twist on dessert, especially at parties. OR if you just want a midnight snack.

Storing Chocolate Peanut Butter Mug Cake

There's no storing! That's what makes this cake so great! It's a single-serve dessert. You mix, microwave, and eat. That's it! There's no need for refrigeration or worrying about how much or how little to make. It's super simple.

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Try This Chocolate Peanut Butter Mug Cake Today

And I do mean today. This chocolate peanut butter mug cake is so quick and easy, you can make it literally whenever you get the craving for cake!

With a total time of five minutes, maybe a little longer, you'll be in and out of the kitchen in no time flat, enjoying your delicious cake. It's the easiest cake recipe you'll ever make. It's a no muss, no fuss cake that's super simple and super delicious. Give it a try!