The return of the coffee mug cake

The pumpkin coffee mug cake was inspired by my cuddly couch crasher Marika, a student at Kenyon college that I play frisbee with who's sticking around in East Africa for two extra months to travel!

She made dinner for Meg and me this past Saturday night, as a thank you for letting her stay at our apt this week: homemade ravioli from scratch with pumpkin filling consisting of pumpkin, garlic, onion, carrot, and parmesan cheese, topped with a spinach and garlic cream sauce. I made a Ugandan salad of tomato, onion, cabbage, and green pepper, tossed with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette. Meg said that balsamic vinegar is good for killing stuff, which I guess kind of makes it the Coke of salad. We busted out a bottle of Robert's Rock red wine, and since we only needed 1/3 of the pumpkin for the ravioli filling, and used the extra we even had from that 1/3 and made pan-fried pumpkin pancakes, I now have 2/3 of a freshly cooked pumpkin in the fridge. I found and considered a Paul Deen Pumpkin Bars recipe (shameless!... and sans the icing), but that would require turning the oven on in our apt, which is the equivalent of shooting fireworks inside the oven in our apt (but which is nothing compared to when the power line falls across the street from our apt), so it will probably be slowly and steadily consumed cup by cup, destined to a fate as pumpkin coffee mug cake.

The (redemptive) dinner retrospective:

Making the pumpkin ravioli (and making impromptu pumpkin pancakes, which ended up being my favorite part of the meal!)



Chopping the nakati (Ugandan spinach)



ZOMG cheese!!! (The cheese easily cost 1/2 of the entire meal!)



South African wine



Dinner (Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" playing in the background not pictured)



I know, I know, you're all judging me (and conveniently, last Saturday was May 21st, 2011, the revised prediction for the date of the Rapture), but my apt has a microwave, so it was inevitable!

Pumpkin cake:
4 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons cooked pumpkin
4 tablespoons milk (or water)
1 teaspoon cinnamon (or allspice, or whatever)
-adapted from Problem Solvin' Mom, with the utterly "apt" for being utterly generic tagline "because life provides plenty of opportunity for creative solutions"

Chocolate cake:
4 tablespoons chocolate (or vanilla, or whatever) cake mix
3 tablespoons milk (or water)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
(sometimes I add 1/2 tablespoon of coffee)

Microwave on high for 1 min or so, and enjoy!