Deep Dark Chocolate Fudgy Mug Cake

This dark chocolate fudgy mug cake takes under 5 minutes to make and seriously satisfies intense chocolate cravings. It also happens to be gluten-free, can easily be made vegan, and is pretty freaking healthy. 

Are you a patient person?

Am I a patient person? Well, it depends. If I’m explaining basic math to a kid, sure. If my mom and I are shopping for jeans and she wants to take a detour through the purses, of course. Honestly, even in the car, I just accept the slow flow of traffic. No big deal.

But there’s a huge difference between being patient when the outcome is certain and when you have no idea what’s going to happen. I know that eventually the kid will understand math, I’ll find a decent pair of jeans, and the car will make it to the intended destination.

When am I impatient? Mostly when I don’t know what’s about to happen. Right now, this primarily applies to serious things like applications for internships or, oh, I don’t know… the entire future. Ugh. These are heavy topics on a Saturday. We’ll come back to these at a later date. Like, when I’m no longer waiting.

Occasionally, though, my lack of patience rears its ugly head at other times. More specifically, it surfaces when I’m exhausted, really freaking hungry, or craving something.

Once upon a time Last week, I was craving chocolate. Now, I am never without chocolate. I have 86% Ghirardelli in my dorm room at pretty much all times and I also had an open bag of mini Reese’s at the time of this particular chocolate craving. But if you’ve ever really been craving chocolate, then you know that sometimes a piece of chocolate just isn’t going to cut it. This was one of those times. There was no time to whip up some chocolate chip cookies or go to the store and buy a box of brownie mix. I was impatient – and I wanted something warm and gooey and chocolatey.

Enter the mug cake.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of mug cakes floating around the internet, but I had never made one until last week. And? Well, now I know why mug cakes exist. They’re the perfect way to have dessert when you just need dessert right now – without having a whole lot of it. I’m the queen of baking a batch of muffins and then eating 8 in a day. Been there, done that. Sometimes that’s fine, but it’s probably better if we make that a not-everyday occurrence, am I right?

Anyway, over the course of a week, I made 5 different versions of this mug cake and this is my favorite. It’s not super sweet, so know that going in (I advise you on how to make it sweeter in the recipe notes). It is dense, gooey, and super-chocolatey and not actually unhealthy at all. I mean, I’m not saying it’s like eating a veggie-packed, salmon-topped, olive oil-dressed salad, just that it’s a pretty healthy cake.

And that the night I shot these pictures… I was impatient and hungry.

The result: those two cakes became (most of) my dinner.

Click to view nutrition facts for this Deep Dark Chocolate Fudgy Mug Cake

Not craving chocolate right now? Pin it for later!

Are you a patient person?

Have you ever made a mug cake?