"Cooking is like making love..

..you do it well, or you do not do it at all."

How true are the lines above!! Comparing 2 exquisite arts as they belonged to one another; Timeless; Exotic; Stress-relieving and not to mention liberating like hell, with amazing dangers involved.. I have never been able to blog about food, despite dreaming and indulging in it all day.. No wonder, I believe in the saying that "Skinny cooks can't be trusted.." If you can't even eat it yourself, how could you make others even enjoy it??

So, under the continuous thunderstorm of taunts of using the new microwave as just a heating device or rice maker; I decided to utilize it better or rather, in a complex way!! So I have Samsung G273V, which is a 20L grill microwave oven..
Now, all my experience of cooking in a conventional grill oven were wasted, when I realized I have none experience of using a microwave for baking purposes.. Well, that would be taken care off later, but the urgent matter at hands were of finding a suitable recipe first.. So thanks to TasteSpotting, I came across some wonderful baked products which looked good and tasted even better.. I decided to take the base of Chocolate Cake from Bits of Taste and add it the cinnamon from the Chocolate Cinnamon Bundt Cake. What say??

Now, quite obviously, some ingredients native to foreign countries would be impossible to find here, in India.. So I had to manage things by trial and error, to suit Indian conditions..
Ingredients:
1/2 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder / I used Cadbury's Cocoa Powder (the Purple tin one)
3/4 cup boiling water
1 & 1/2 cups all-purpose flour / I used plain Maida
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder / Instead of baking soda, I used 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, so in total 1 teaspoon
1/2 teaspoon instant espresso or instant coffee / I used Nescafe instant coffee
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil / I used salted butter (softened in microwave at lowest power)
1 large egg / I used 3 (Since they filled the cup, I measured everything with)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Cinnamon sticks (as much as you like it..)

Method:
1. I first coated the inside of a glass baking dish with molten butter.

2. Then in boiling water, I dissolved the cocoa powder.

3. First I thought of putting the sugar directly in the eggs, but decided to ground the sugar and cinnamon together first.

4. Using a sift, I mixed together the flour, baking powder and instant coffee in a large bowl.

5. Now, my food processor came as a blessing in disguise for me, as dissolving the sugar in the liquids is the worst task ever invented in baking. I started whisking the 3 eggs in the food processor and added the sugar.. After a giving a minute fighting the flying splashes of sweet eggs, I added the melted butter, vanilla essence and cooled cocoa mixture.

6. Now by this time, the beige colored eggs mixture had turned sweet-brown and started to jump even more out of the food-processor's lid.. It's quite the task now, but add the flour mixture in step#4, spoon-by-spoon into the cocoa-egg whirlpool..

7. Give it a minute and then turn the food processor off. Then I removed the batter in the baking dish..

8. Now I got reminded of Golden rule of Baking, "Preheating the oven", the manual clearly said, "Never operate the oven empty".. So I just placed the dish in the microwave and chose Combination Cooking ( Microwave+Grill ) with 600W of Microwave for 9 minutes.. Now then I kept looking, peeping, glancing, glueing my eye to the Microwave door, hoping to register the progress of my beloved cake.. And there, Lord, Behold!! It Rose!!...

9. After 9 Minutes, I chose the Grill function and let it brown at the top for 4 minutes.. Then it started to hit, the CINNAMON.. It filled the entire kitchen and the home.. Tempting!!

10. Who would have thought, Cake in a Microwave!! :D

The glaze shown the picture is Chocolate syrup by Mapro, additional.