Gingerbread Mug Cake

This easy and quick Gingerbread Mug Cake recipe will bring the holiday cheer in a flash! All you need are some basic (mostly pantry!) ingredients, a mug, and a few minutes. This delicious gingerbread dessert will have you feeling oh-so-cozy on a cold night, and without a whole sink of dishes to wash!

This Gingerbread Mug Cake recipe has all the warm cozy flavors of more traditional gingerbread: molasses, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ground ginger of course! But it’s really easy to make and in a convenient singe serving size. So you can make it any time you are craving a delicious holiday dessert! Try it topped with powdered sugar, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or festive sprinkles!

Gingerbread Mug Cake Ingredients

As I mentioned, you can find most of these ingredients right in your pantry:

• Butter: unsalted if you’ve got it. If not, just don’t add the extra pinch of salt the recipe calls for.
• Molasses: this is a very classic ingredient in gingerbread and helps give the cake a nice dark color and deep flavor
• Granulated sugar: I tested this recipe with brown sugar, but it made the cake too dense. Granulated sugar works perfectly and produces a fluffy cake.
• Milk: I used whole milk, but whatever you have on hand should work!
• All purpose flour
• Baking powder
• Cinnamon
• Ground ginger: a must in gingerbread!
• Nutmeg
• Salt: as mentioned, omit if you want to use salted butter

Spice Substitution Ideas for Gingerbread

This recipe calls for ground ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg. If you don’t have all of these spices, here’s what you can do:

• If you don’t have ground ginger or cinnamon: try pumpkin pie spice instead! I would avoid just doubling up on the cinnamon or ginger though, because it may overwhelm the cake, resulting in a bitter aftertaste.
• If you don’t have nutmeg: this recipe only calls for a pinch of nutmeg, so you can just leave it out. Or, substitute a pinch of allspice or cloves.
• Or, you can create your own spice blend with whatever warm holiday-type spices you have in your cabinet. This recipe calls for a total of ½ (plus a pinch) of spices. So, throw together whatever warm spices you have to equal that amount. You can try cloves, allspice, mace, and pumpkin pie spice.

Helpful Tips

Here’s a couple hints and tricks I’ve picked up on making a perfect mug cake:

• If you want to unmold your mug cake after it’s cooked, swirl the melted butter around the sides of the mug before adding the other ingredients. This will help it from sticking as much!

• To avoid a lumpy batter, add the dry ingredients into the wet gradually, whisking with a fork in between. I had good results by adding 1 tablespoon of the flour first, whisking with a fork until most of the lumps are gone. Then I added the second tablespoon and whisked again. After that, I just added the rest of the dry ingredients and whisked one more time until everything was evenly combined. You may still have one or two little lumps, but that’s ok.

If the bottom of your mug is narrow like mine, tilt the mug a little to the side when mixing. This will give you more space to maneuver the fork around so it’s easier to mix.

Do you love mug cakes as much as I do? Check out these favorite mug cake recipes!

• Honey Peanut Butter Banana Mug Cake
• Strawberry Shortcake Mug Cake
• Fudgy Mocha Mug Cake
• Apple Cinnamon Mug Cake

If you’ve tried this recipe for Gingerbread Mug Cake, please let me know what you thought about it in the comments down below, I would love to hear from you! You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to see more delicious recipes from Nibble and Dine!

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