Let them eat CAKE!

Even during their 2 week Paleo challenge! 

Luckily, it is the last day of my (successful!) Paleo challenge. Just in time to go home to Michigan to celebrate my boyfriend's birthday. Which, no doubt, will be full of delicious carbs. Like, I said he can BAKE.

His Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake, my personal favorite, the picture doesn't do it justice. I'm salivating looking it.

BUT a girl just needs her cake! A no flour, no dairy cake? Sounds gross to me. NOT SO FAST! I promised you some single serving desserts and I won't let my crazy 2 weeks of Paleo stop that. Tonight, I made this delicious, dark chocolate, walnut and strawberry mug cake. And it fit right in with my Paleo challenge.

One quality I look for in my friends, I'm not kidding, is that they appreciate dessert as much as I do. My med school roommate and I joke that we have a second stomach for dessert. My best friend from college, Rachel , and I can always count on each other to finish off a decadent dessert at the end of a dinner date. Luckily, Rachel is also a kick butt runner, so we influence each other in healthy ways too!

How my med school roommate and I celebrated Match Day. 
 Every once in a while, it's okay to go (a little) overboard. 

With Rachel at the Bayshore Races May 2012. Where I ran my first 10K and she PR'ed her half marathon!

So here is how I satisfied my sweet tooth tonight, all Paleo, and all delicious.

Again, the pictures don't do it justice. This may be the post that convinces me to use a real camera instead of my phone.

Chocolate Strawberry Walnut PaleOH MY GOODNESS mugcake

original recipe adapted from The Wannabe Chef

Hands on time: 3 minutes

Total Time: Less than 5 minutes!

What you need:

• 1 small banana
• 1.5 Tbs nut butter, almond or peanut are my favorites
• 2 Tbs cocoa powder
• 1 Tbs sweetener (if you want it, I like my chocolate dark and kind of bitter, so I don't use it)
• 1.5 Tbs egg substitute or one real egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 Tbs mini chocolate chips (or walnuts, or dried fruit, any combination, go anywhere you want here!)

Mash up the banana and mix in the nut butter until you get a batter consistency. Add in the egg and vanilla, blend completely. Next, stir in the cocoa and the sweeter. Finish with your "mix-ins". This is even tastier if you blend the batter together in a food processor, no lumps! Microwave for about a minute and a half, until the edges look cooked but the middle is still a little wet. Be careful not to overcook, you want a moist, delicious cake!

I topped my cake with homemade strawberry jam! Yes, I also make jam. SO good. 

Feel free to change the proportions a little bit until you get the consistency you like, I played around with the amount of egg substitute until I got it just how I liked it. 

What you get:

The way I make it... a no sugar, no flour, satisfying chocolate dessert. If you add sugar (which you should NOT feel bad about, gotta make it worth it, just go sparingly), you still get lots of benefits. One, it's a single serving cake, instant portion control. Bananas have potassium, vitamin C and fiber. And of course, chocolate makes people happy (it also may lower blood pressure and decrease your bad cholesterol, LDL).

Note: This is NOT low calorie, I'd approximate the whole cake at around, 300 calories, depending on what you put in it, but it is packed with nutrients and way healthier than any other cake you could get for 300 calories. You could even separate the recipe into two ramekins and make two cakes (watch your microwave time though), now only 150 ish calories a piece! And you can share...that would be nice of you.

Let them eat cake!