I'm a teacher and just made the cake in a cup with my students in class. I didn't use the cake mix recipe, but substituted my basic Texas Sheet Cake recipe without the cinnamon. I also offered students a choice of Spicy Pumpkin (from a moist pumpkin muffin recipe) as an alternative. We baked the chocolate for 1 minute and the pumpkin for 2 minutes in a microwave. When cakes were done, we topped them with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream and chocolate or caramel ice cream topping. We thought the taste was much better than the cake mix varieties we'd tried initially. I think any homeade muffin, quick bread, or moist cake recipe would work. We found the thinner the batter, the less time it took to cook. You want it to spring back but still be sticky to the touch. It cooks a bit more after coming out of the microwave.