Mango Cream Cake - Part III (Recipe)

Since I am always short on time - I made the cake out of a cake mix and let it dry on the rack. The cake came out a bit dense and didn't rise much. You can either make a round cake or a square cake for the recipe.

Recipe:
Cake - Any kind of dense cake that is easy to roll - not a crumbly or light cake. I used a Pillsbury Moist Vanilla Cake Mix.

Custard Filling:
Milk - 1 Cup
Custard Powder (Vanilla Flavour) - 1.5 tbsp
Mango Puree - 3-4 tsp
Castor Sugar - 2tbsp


Boil the milk, add the custard powder and sugar and stir till you get a thick consistency. Leave in Fridge to cool. If you are running short on time - put the custard in the freezer but keep a check on it that it doesn't set like a pudding - should be easy to spread like a cheeze spread.
Once the custard is a bit cool add the mango puree and stir.

Cream Filling
Double Cream - 1 Cup
Castor Sugar - 2 tbsp
Mango Puree - 3-4 tsp

Whisk the cream and castor sugar till cream starts holding a slight shape. Add the mango puree and fold. Leave in fridge to chill.

While the filling is cooling - cut the cake into strips. Since I had a round cake - I cut it in circles starting from the outside in such a manner that you can make swiss rolls.
Then I folded the custard filling lightly into the cream filling and spread it on the cake strips. I lined a cake tin with foil. I took the biggest strip - made a swiss roll with the filling and put it in the center of the cake. The rest of the strips I the custard filling on it and wrapped it around the center swiss roll. Whatever filling was left I spread evenly on the remaining cake and put it in the freezer to chill.

After two hours - I put a mixture of finely smashed digestive biscuits mixed with a tablespoon of golden syrup and evenly spread it on the top of the cake and pressed it down with a flat spoon.

After another three hours (it's soo hot in Delhi it took extra time to set. If you are in a cool place you can follow the recipe as is. If you are working in a kitchen or with weather that is not quite cool you can use a bit of delatine so that your filling sets well.)

Icing:
Double Cream - 1 cup
Icing Sugar - 4 tbsp
Mango Puree - 2-3 tsp

While the cake is setting in the freezer. Whisk the cream and icing sugar till slightly stiff. Fold in the puree and leave in the fridge to cool. Min. amount of time 40 mins.

Once the cake is set - invert it on a plate and remove the foil such that the biscuit layer is at the bottom. Ice the cake and leave in the freezer for another 20 minutes to set.

Put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before setting so that the filling on the cake doest taste frozen.

Decoration:
I just used a bit of bitter chocolate shavings and small mango pieces to decorate the cake but you can beautify it as you want.

Mango Cream Cake - Part II (Pictures...)

Apr 30, 2009 contd.

8:00pm Cake out of the freezer. Not falling apart yet!!! Yayyyy!!!!

8:30pm Cake all iced and put in the freezer for the final lag.

9:45pm Power cut yet again!!!! But thankfully the cake had set, though by the time I started taking the pictures the icing which was made with cream and sugar had started to melt a bit - I don't know what I did wrong - maybe it hadn't set very well in the 1st place???

10:45pm Cake is Mmmmmmmm!!!! Reviews were awesome!!! And I was very very proud of myself because - this cake was an improvisation from my original recipe and turned out scrumptious -this is an original recipe and it is the 1st ever cake I have iced and decorated in my entire life! I have done a few basic melt the choc. and pour on cake type icings but nothing elaborate...

The pictures are not as great as the cake tasted.... but I had to show you the end result!!!! Recipe to follow soon!

Mumbai & Mango Cream Cake - Part I

I am sorry to be out of circulation for long but am back now... and I may have a story, recipe and pictures by the end of the post - so thats always a good sign!

I was away visiting family in Mumbai last week and had a wonderful and relaxing week - lots of eating happened - yummy food from Mahesh Lunch Home home delivered and sweet juicy alphonsos was the highlight for the foodie side of me. Catching up with family and friends was much needed!!!

Now that I am back in Delhi with two dozen alphonsos for the husband and myself I owe my blog at least a good mango recipe... I have been doing a lot of reading up on cakes and thougth about baking a Mango Cream for my son's half year b'day!

I am doing this post in parts coz I have a feeling I will forget the recipe or get involved in a million others things and won't end up finishing this post.

April 30th, 2009
10:30am
I decided to bake my son a Mango Cream Cake and I needed to get it ready by 30th night. I had an hour before my son woke up and not all the ingredients to bake a cake from scratch. Lucky me. I had a box of moist Vanilla Cake mix from Pillsbury's. I put all the ingredients together and popped the cake into the oven.

10:45am
I was all ready to have my son awake for his massage and bath routine and the cake would be ready in 30 minutes. Just as I was ready to pat my back and the lights went. Power cuts in Delhi is supposedly a regular feature but not having lived in Delhi long enough I just don't seem to take the situation in my stride as well as Delhites do and go about their routine as if nothing has happened. Anyways - the cake had baked for 5 mins. Waited 10 more mins and put the cake in the fridge - coz I didn't know when the power would be back and I didn't want to take a chance of running my oven on the invertor for fear of blowing the invertor. That would have left my son and me with no electricty at all.

12:00pm
Lights have come. Cake goes back in over. 30 minutes later I have a very very flat cake. Totally Expected.

12:30pm
My son's food is in the food processor and the very very flat cake is cooling on the rack.

1:45pm
I couldn't have slit the cake horizontally to make my original recipe so I have a couple of options. Make mango custard and do a regular sponge cake with custard topping. But have done a sponge and custard combo no. of times and nothing special about it.

3:25pm
Have tried to execute the brainwave I had. It will be out of the freezer at 7pm. If it's picture worthy and tastes good I shall have the recipe and pics up by the weekend! Please pray it comes out well...

Strawberry & Mascarpone on the Sponge...

This was an impromptu dessert to celebrate my son's monthly birthday. We hadn't gotten around to cutting a cake or celebrating his monthly Birthday on the 1st and I wanted to do something special for him over the weekend! We had a late Friday night and was up with my alarm clock (read: my son) at 6:30am.

I wanted a quick dessert completed within an hour before my boys woke up and demanded my attention... Delhi has become really really hot suddenly and I wanted to do something light and fluffy and fruity! I dug out a box of ready cake mix - moist vanilla cake flavor (Pillsbury). I thought I will bake a cake and add some fresh fruit and cream to it and voila my dessert would be ready.

I baked the cake according to the instructions and being a novice baker made added some Mascarpone cheese to the batter and baked it too much and instead of a white fluffy cake I found a flat bread like looking thing in my cake tin.

Anyways here goes the recipe:

Bake cake according to instructions on the box and add one yolk less and 2-3 tbsp Mascarpone cheese to the batter. Bake for 5-7 minutes less than what is mentioned on the box and let cake cool.

I then took equal parts Mascarpone cheese and heavy cream and whipped it together till slightly stiff with 1 tbsp Castor sugar and left it in the fridge (since it was too hot to leave it outside...). While the cake was cooling I ran to my "fruitwalla" and got a box of the most luscious looking strawberries to add to my dessert because I couldn't think of anything better than the bright blood red berries to offset the whiteness of the cake and cream...

If your cake rises nicely unlike mine then slice it from the middle and add 1/4 of the cream mixture and strawberries (cut into small bite sized pieces) and sandwich the two cakes together. Then take the remaining cream mixture and coat the cake on the outside and decorate with strawberries cut into halves.

That was my original idea which didn't pan out quite well... so this is what I did with my dessert:

I tried to slice my cake but that didn't turn out quite well so I cut out small round cakes from my big cake (using a sharp edged bowl). I then pretty much stuck to my original idea and used the marcarpone and cream mixture to sandwich together the cake and strawberries (as seen in the picture and I put the remnants of the cake I put them in glasses - alternating layers of cake, cream and strawberry's and topped it with a dollop of cream.

Despite my disastrous cake the end result turned out to be great. the mascarpone cheese in the cake gave it a a very soft texture dipped in syrup kinda texture and noone can really go wrong with strawberry's and cream!!!!

The dessert won me rave reviews from my in-laws and husband and he actually proclaimed it my best dessert ever! I wish the pictures could do justice to the taste but you will just have to take my word for it.

Till next time....