Frugaltroph

For our very first Frugaltroph article, we decided to feature our new favorite frugal dessert. Whenever we bake a whole cake, it often begins to go stale before we’re halfway through it. Therefore we came up with the idea of Cup-o-Cakes, an easy, time- and money-saving way to prepare personal-sized cakes as a snack for yourself, to enjoy with a friend or everyone at your dinner table.

How to Make Cup-o-Cake

1. Prepare cake mix as directed in an airtight container. If you do not consume a lot of cake, just mix 1/3 of a pack of cake mix with 1 egg and cut the other ingredients (oil and water) to 1/3.
2. Store unused batter in the refrigerator.
3. When you feel like having cake, put a few spoonfuls of batter in a microwaveable cup or mug. Do not fill cups more than 1/2 full because the cake will rise quite a bit.
4. Microwave for about 1 – 1½ minutes or until cake is fully cooked.
5. Top with frosting and sprinkles if desired.
6. Eat or wrap as gift.

Sack/School Lunch: Tup-o-Cake

If you have children or bring your own lunch to work, imagine how nice it would be to have a beautiful, personal sized cake for a snack or dessert. To do this, follow the same directions for Cup-o-Cake, but make it in a small microwave-safe Tupperware or food storage container. Top it with frosting and/or sprinkles to make your children feel special.

For convenience, you can prepare a week’s worth of Tup-o-Cakes on Sunday evening.

Varying Cake Flavors

• Swirl different cake mixes together
• Change frosting colors and flavors
• Mix in chocolate chips
• Top with jam
• Mix in blueberries, mashed bananas and other fruits
• Top with maraschino cherry
• Use brownie instead of cake mix
• Top with instant pudding instead of frosting
• For the health & weight conscious, mix some oats or bran into your batter before cooking
• Layer different colors of cake mixes in your cup or container
• Add vanilla, lemon, almond or other extract in your cake mix

Benefits of Cup-o-Cakes and Tup-o-Cakes

• Saves utilities: eliminates oven preheating and baking
• Saves time: only requires 1 or 2 minutes to cook a cake
• Saves money by buying in “bulk” and using as needed
• Prevents waste from making more than you can consume
• Reduces risk of forgetting and burning a whole cake
• Portion control

Cost of a Cup-o-Cake

We tend to eat small servings and usually use about 2 tablespoons of batter in an 8 oz. cup. With cake mix at $1.00 or $1.50, we estimate the cost of each serving to be around $0.20 including the egg, oil and frosting.

Gift Ideas

A Cup-o-Cake makes a great gift for any occasion.

• Present it to a friend or co-worker on his/her birthday.
• If giving a mug as a gift, you could prepare a Cup-o-Cake in the new mug as part of the gift.
• Add candles for a birthday.
• For coffee lovers, make a coffee flavored cake.
• Wrap the Cup-o-Cake in cellophane and tie with a ribbon.

Family Member’s Birthday

On your child or spouse’s birthday, prepare a Tup-0-Cake with his/her lunch. Put pretty frosting on it, or write Happy Birthday in frosting or candy letters, include a candle or put a bow on the Tupperware.

Be creative and have fun.

"Sie essen, sie trinken und bezahlen nicht gern. They like to eat, drink and don't like to pay." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Image by Madoline Hatter

Frugaltroph is a blog about frugal cooking containing recipes, money saving tips, and simplified versions of traditional dishes. We, Penelope Pince and Madoline Hatter, consider good dining an important part of life, but not so important as to take up a major portion of our time and finances. We have been cooking since our teens and would like to share our experience and a few of our own recipes and methods.

We plan to write on subjects such as school lunches for kids, ethnic foods, holidays an special occasions, creative presentations, and foods of various colors.

A brief explanation of our project title and motto

In biology, the term “-troph” is combined with another word to describe a way of feeding (e.g. autotroph, heterotroph). Therefore, “frugaltroph” is our way of saying “Frugal Feeding” or the diet of Homo frugalis.

Our motto “Sie essen, sie trinken, und bezahlen nicht gern” is a line from Epiphanias, a humorous poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe which is one of our favorite songs (music by Hugo Wolf). In English, it says “They eat, they drink, and do not like to pay.” Our three pigs, represent the three kings of the poem.

We currently plan to do one cooking project a week: to make and photograph the process and results, and write up a post with ingredients and instructions which will be posted here and also at the Pecuniarities site, our frugal lifestyle blog. Check back soon for our first Frugaltroph column.