Mango Tango

Posted by Bonita

It's mid-July, and that could only mean one thing...mango season! Having just come back from Toronto, we knew that the asian supermarkets would be stocked with mangoes, and naturally, we stocked up on some. Well...more than some. Who would have thought that we'd end up lugging home with us 26 mangoes? Yes...26. We're slightly crazy...



But having so many mangoes around meant that I could finally make a Mango Mousse Cake, something that I've been dying to try for awhile. Now, I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan a mousse cakes. I'd probably would have enjoyed eating a mango cheesecake more than a mousse cake. But mousse cakes are quite popular amongst Chinese cake shops, so I thought I'd would pay homage to the mango mousse cake myself. I found a recipe here and gave it a try.

As you can see, this cake needs work. First of all, the sides of my cake were sloppy. That's my fault really. I don't have those fancy plastic cake strips to line my cake pan, and my attempt at lining the cake pan with parchment paper failed (leaving me very, VERY frustrated), so I had to use plastic wrap instead. It meant having to compromise the beauty of the cake because the plastic wrap would leave its mark on the cake.

As for the taste test, it needs improvement. First off, there wasn't enough mango flavour to the cake. Perhaps if I add more mango puree to the mix next time (while decreasing the amount of cream used) and perhaps adding a few more drops of mango extract might help. Also, my cake layers were a little too thick in my opinion. I would definitely cut thinner layers next time (again, I only had myself to blame. Me and my poor blade work.). And lets not get started on the decoration itself. God knows what I was thinking. I wasn't actually...I just sort of haphazardly plunked down mango slices and piped out whipped cream, so it's not the most attractive cake. Makes it look so amateurish...at best...



Another troublesome aspect about the recipe was that, because it came from Hong Kong, I had to convert some of the measurements, which was also a bit of a pain. All in all, I think this recipe needs work, although it gave me some sort of base to work from if I do attempt this cake again in the future.

Not sure what my next experiment will be. Perhaps Japanese Cheesecake? I've also been dying to try that, and I've been craving cheesecake for awhile now. But to be quite frank, I'm desperate for some more mouths to feed and help taste test for me...