Minty Mug Cakes

 I have been experimenting with microwave mug cake recipes. The best recipe so far includes colored sprinkles and vanilla for flavoring. I decided to try adding mint extract for a different flavor. We have plenty of mint growing in the garden, so I decided to take a recipe detour and make mint extract. 

One quick and easy recipe was for mint simple syrup, but this might mess up the amount of sugar in the cake. The other type of recipe was for mint extract with an alcohol base. The process is to chop mint, place it in a mason jar, add vodka, and let it sit for several weeks. The alcohol burns off during cooking, leaving just the mint flavor. This seemed like a good method, but I was impatient. I found another recipe to speed up the process. It said to cook the jar in a water bath at 135 F for 3 hours. My induction cooker wouldn't go that low, so I ended up cooking it for a shorter time at 140-160 F.  I will let it sit longer to see if it continues to get stronger before I filter out the mint leaves. Another option the recipes mention is adding a second batch of fresh mint leaves to add more flavor.

A year later, I made a new batch of mint extract, but used everclear as the alcohol base. It's 95% instead of 40%, so it seems to work better.

Back to the mug cake recipe. I started with a recipe by Lauren Allen from http://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/vanilla-mug-cake/ . I switched to oil instead of butter, and used more vanilla. I converted the 3 tablespoons of milk to 3 tablespoons of water plus one tablespoon of powdered milk. This way the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, powdered milk, and colored sprinkles) are shelf-stable, and then when I'm ready to cook it I add 2T oil, 2T water, and 1T imitation vanilla. After experimenting with different recipes and substitutions, this is the best mug cake I have found so far. The imitation vanilla flavor wasn't very strong, so that's why I wanted to try the mint extract instead. If I had store-bought peppermint oil, it would probably only take one tiny drop.   

Here's the final recipe with the mint extract:

1/4cup plus 1 1/2 teaspoons flour

2 Tablespoons sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 Tablespoon powdered milk

1 teaspoon colored sprinkles

2 Tablespoons canola oil

3 Tablespoons water

1 teaspoon homemade mint extract

Mix and microwave for 90 seconds.

Light Flicker Analyzer

 After the problem I had with an LED sewing machine light flickering, I decided to build a lighting flicker analyzer. I built an adapter to connect a solar panel to my oscilloscope, which allows me to see a live display of the light level vs time.  

Light Flicker Analyzer

First, I tested the mostly dark room. It was noisy with no pattern. Next, I tested the old incandescent bulb. It had a mostly smooth pattern with a very low amplitude wave.

Incandescent bulb

Next, I tested the E12 LED sewing machine bulb. The difference was quite dramatic. It showed a pulse about every 9ms (60 Hz). This explains why my photos of the sewing machine had dark stripes- the light is flashing. It's barely visible to the human eye but obvious when I took a picture.

Flickering LED

Photo of flickering light

Finally, I tested the new LED bulb from IKEA. It isn't designed to go in sewing machines (too large to fit easily and almost too bright), so I tested it in an old candelabra light. The oscilloscope results look almost identical to the incandescent bulb. The wave is very smooth and barely noticeable on the graph. This means it probably has capacitors and a better control board.

IKEA LED bulb