I love baking.
I love baking chiffon cakes, banana bread, sugar cookies, cupcakes, brownies, apple pies, muffins… Anything, really. I occasionally invite my girlfriends over to have “baking days” where we would just bake non-stop and feast on our creations (but only after taking a series of selfies with them) as we watch our favorite chick flicks, all without feeling any guilt. I love baking at 2AM on a weekday when I have an essay due in the morning. I love sitting in front of the oven with a cup of tea as I watch my cake gradually fluff and turn golden. That’s how much I love baking.
But as a university student, I don’t always have the time to bake (especially not at 2AM on a weekday when I have an essay due the next morning… Yay procrastination!). Gathering all the ingredients and precisely measuring them out on the scale does become time consuming, and the same goes for checking up on the cookies every 2 seconds so they don’t get burnt.
So being the lazy student the other day, I decided to look for simplified versions of baked goodies on Cookpad. Cookpad is one of the most well-known online recipe sites in Japan that I use pretty often, and I noticed that many of the simplified baking recipes called for hotcake-mix (hotcake-mix is basically the same thing as pancake-mix but slightly sweeter). Those simplified recipes substituted flour, baking soda/powder, etc. with hotcake-mix, which allowed a shorter list of ingredients than usual! Pretty smart, right?
I’m usually not much of a cake-mix kind of person because I feel like baking from scratch is a lot healthier and helps me feel more accomplished (although Betty Crocker’s mix is heavenly, I must admit). But after scrolling through numerous delicious and simple looking recipes substituted with hot-cake mix, I was off to the grocery store for some eggs and hotcake mix.
I tried out 5 recipes from Cookpad that used hotcake-mix as flour substitutes. They were all super easy to follow, and not to mention, amazingly delicious!
1. Cookies
You only need 4 ingredients to bake these cookies!
- Hotcake mix
- Eggs
- Sugar
- Butter
I liked that the cookie was very crisp on the outside but fluffy and chewy on the inside.
Warning: The faint sweetness of the hotcake-mix makes these cookies intensely addicting.
2. Brownies
You can bake these brownies with:
- Hotcake mix
- Chocolate
- Eggs
- Butter/oil
- Sugar
They’re not too sweet, nor are they too plain. So if you think American brownies are waay too sweet for you, try this recipe out :)
3. Yogurt “cheese” cake
Just mix
- Hotcake mix
- Yogurt
- Sugar
- Egg
- Oil
Pour it in a pan, bake, and voila! You have yourself a lovely cheesecake!
Yup. No cheese. I was confused at first too but the yogurt does wonders and substitutes the cheese. MINDBLOWN.
4. Banana Bread
You can even bake delicious banana bread with hotcake mix!
Just mix
- Hotcake mix
- Bananas
- Margarine
- Eggs
- Sugar
And pop it in the oven. Simple as that.
5. Mugcupcakes
If you thought the above four recipes are still too much work, this recipe is for you.
It’s a cake in a mug that you can make IN THE MICROWAVE. And to top that off, you only need 3 ingredients:
- Hotcake mix
- Milk
- Sugar
Sugar is optional, so technically it’s a 2-INGREDIENT RECIPE.
So quit whining about how you’re too busy or how you don’t have the right stuff to bake. I know you have hotcake-mix and milk. Stop lying to yourself.