Upside Down Two Mango Cake. Go cheap, go dry.

A while ago, I prepared a fig tart tatin. That worked pretty well for a first attempt. In fact, it worked extremely well. With the enthusiasm of the first time lucky, I decided it would be a good idea to try another dessert. I had a spare mango in the fruit bowl and the tatin success had me thinking of upside-down desserts. 

Naturally, this led me to concocting an upside-down mango cake. As with so many of my forays into unknown culinary country, things didn’t work out exactly as planned. If I wanted to make this a great cake, I should have spent the money and gone for two mangos. So while the cake was pretty good, it was a bit on the dry side. Thankfully, there is a solution for that; whipped cream.

Hardly worth photographing. The ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 110 ml milk
• 200 grammes of butter
• 225 grammes of caster sugar
• 260 grammes of self-raising flour
• 1 vanilla pod
• 2 eggs
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 3 teaspoons of brown sugar

Scrape the vanilla seeds out of the pod. Add it to the milk and whisk it in with a fork.

Not a very good shot of the seeds being scraped. My excuse: Detailed work requiring two hands does not make for an easy shot.

Whisk together the eggs and the sugar until it is nice and light. Soften 15 grammes of the butter and add it to the mixture a bit at a time.

My first action shot. Eggs and sugar beating. Get it nice and light.

Next, add the flour about a quarter at a time. Do likewise with the milk mixture, alternating with the flour.

A nice sloppy end result is desirable (for once).

Melt 50 grammes of butter in a nice pot with the sugar and the lemon juice.

I can take out my mango frustration on the lemon.

Pour the resulting mixture into in a lined 9″ cake tin. Feel free to admire my new silicon cake ‘tin’.

This smells lovely. The mix of butter, lemon and sugar is very tempting. It’s also very hot.

Chop the mango into nice chunks. Darnation! I should have used two mangos.

One of the benefits of cutting mango is the tasty bits that never make it to the cake.

Put the mango in the cake tin. Add the cake mixture.

I REALLY should have used two mangos.

Pop this into a preheated oven at 160º C for 35 minutes. I left mine in for 45.

I suspect I could have taken it out earlier. It might not have been quite as dry.

Let it cool. Turn it out on to a rack and remove the parchment paper.

For the last time, I’ll mention the lack of mango. Time to think cream!

Let it cool. Whip some cream and get ready to serve.

Yep, a good dollop of cream saves the day. That is if dollop = half pint.

My verdict on my own efforts. It needed a good dollop of cream but it tasted really good. The lesson from this post: Get the second mango.