Mug cakes have long been the best friend of every college student without access to an actual kitchen but a craving for the sweet sweet caress of a chocolate treat.

Let's face it, brownies? Amazing! Store-bought prepared brownies (excluding, of course, the classic and well-loved Little Debbie Cosmic Brownie) are usually a dry disappointment. You want something hot and gooey that feels like home!

The recipe isn't a 3-2-1, but it's so worth it in the end. This got me through some struggles, y'all. Real adult struggles, like whether I was going to pass Math for Structural Analysis & Design or what was going to happen to my favorite character on "Gravity Falls" this season ... forget I said that.

What you'll need:

• A mug
• A microwave
• Measuring cups. You can get these at Dollar Tree or Walmart or you could just steal one from home.
• A fork or you can steal one from the cafe

Now for ingredients!

• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 1/4 cup of sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 teaspoons of vanilla extract (or just a few drops)
• 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons of Hershey's Natural Unsweetened Cocoa
• A dash of baking powder
• A pinch of salt

If you'd like to spice things up, feel free to add a couple tablespoons of chocolate chips, walnuts or whatever your heart desires. I personally like to top mine with one scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Directions:

Mash up the butter with a fork and add the sugar. Heat it in the microwave for around 40-50 seconds on HIGH. This'll help the cooking process later because all the ingredients will mix better with melted butter than solid chunks. Stir it up like drama at a middle school dance.

Add in the rest of your wet ingredients: the vanilla extract and the egg. Stir thoroughly with a fork. Make sure you break up the egg like a T-Swift song.

Stir in the dry ingredients: the cocoa, salt, baking powder and flour. Things are starting to get interesting, right? We're almost there!

Whisk it all together with the fork until it creates a batter-like consistency. Batter up! At this point, you may want to just eat brownie batter, and I won't judge you if you do. It's totally up to you. Get amped because you're one step away from a chocolate explosion!

Here's the complicated part. Cooking. On my standard Hamilton Beach microwave, I cook it for 1 minute 40 seconds on 50 percent power. It comes out still a little gooey and full of love, but that's how I like it. If you like your brownie more cake-y, microwave it for anywhere from 1:50 to 2:00 on 50 percent power. You don't want to cook it too long because it'll be a hard unpleasant mess.

(Hi ya'll. You can see I'm in my pajamas, but that's OK because
I'm sure you will be too when you make this sweet, sweet, hunk of junk food.)

The recipe has evolved a lot over the years. It started as an adaptation of a Food Network recipe I made a long time ago. I added in a couple things and took a few out. I took away some microwave magic from a couple of other mug recipes, but with a good bit of fiddling, I really made it my own. The 50 percent power tip makes an exponential difference on how well the brownie cooks.

Enough of that unwanted background information; here's a picture of this baby fresh out the microwave.

But we're not done yet! No way! We've gotta GARNISH THIS DISH.

Ooh yeah we've got some chopped walnuts! BAM! How about some Hershey's Chocolate Sauce? YOU KNOW IT!

Insert fork and enjoy.

Hope you have fun with this awesome brownie recipe, and to our incoming Class of 2019 freshman, have a happy and safe orientation week!