mango cream cake

I was planning to make a chocolate cake with strawberry and white chocolate ganache the whole week but alas! Cold Storage ran out of strawberries and the only ones available are like twice the price of the normal ones. I concluded that it was too expensive for my baking experiments and hence decided on a mango cream cake instead.

Now, what's a mango cream cake? Wells, I imagined one to be a wonderfully soft sponge cake filled with cream cheese frosting and fresh sweet mangoes. Mmm...


Mango Cream Cake

Start by baking 2 classic genoise (see recipe in strawberry yoghurt mousse cake)

While waiting for the cakes to cool, cube 3 large mangoes.
I had to add sugar to the mangoes as they were too sour. Thus, I tried to mitigate it by adding 2 tbsp of sugar + 1 tbsp of mango juice (Fruit Tree is way much better than Peel Fresh for the mango juice) and it sit in the fridge for 15 minutes or so.

Prepare the mango syrup

1/2 cup of chopped mangoes
1 tbsp of sugar (to taste, can omit if mangoes are sweet)
1/3 cup (80ml) of water

Put everything in the blender and blend until smooth.
Strain through a sieve.

Prepare the whipped cream cheese frosting

250ml cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp (45g) sugar
360ml heavy cream

Whip heavy cream until firm peaks. Cover and refrigerate.
Whip cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until creamy and smooth.
Fold a third of the whipped cream into cream cheese mixture.
Fold in the remaining cream
Use immediately or cover and refrigerate.

Finally, assemble the cake

Trim the top crust and slice the genoise into 2 horizontally. We will need 3 halves of the genoise.
Place one of the layers with cut side up on a cardboard cake round.
Brush mango syrup on it. (Each layer needs about 5 tbsp)
Spoon the mangoes on top of the layer.
Spread the whipped cream cheese frosting over the mangoes in an even layer.
Repeat with the middle layer.
For the top layer, brush the syrup, then frost the sides and top of the cake.
Garnish the top of the cake with mangoes and sides with toasted almond flakes.
Serve


Tasting notes & learning points:
So Rose was right after all. The genoise does taste so much better with syrup. According to The Cake Bible, the perfect amount of syrup is 3-4 tbsp for every egg used in the batter. I decided on 3 tbsp/egg since I added milk to my batter. This works out to 12 tbsp of syrup per cake and hence 6 tbsp of syrup per half. However, since the mango cubes are a little moist, I decided to use 5 tbsp of syrup per layer of genoise which worked out fine. The cake was moist and soft and not pasty.
Everyone loved the cake but I felt that it would have been much better if the mangoes were ripe. Toasting almonds can be done easily on a dry frying pan over medium heat which takes about 5 minutes.