That took about 3 days to come up with a final design and after the initial prototype with the Mango Lassi cream cheese style frosting (seen here)
I decided to go in a new direction because the frosting was just so loose.... i considered thickening it with custard powder but then i had to watch his allergies (see previous post) so i couldn't do anything too risky... Also Look at that thing... It looks terrible lol... The watery looking stuff over the passion fruit is my attempt at caramelized decorations... turns out i should stick to chocolate work and leave the sugar spinning o the pros for the mean time lol.
All in all i think this original one looks terrible and i wasn't a big fan of the taste although mum and sisters disagreed and thought it was nice, but they are always nice when i make stuff and tend to eat anything that's put in front of them lol.....
So..... Back to the drawing board!!
In the end i went back to basics.... I had to think what would actually convey exotic fruits, but at the same time not kill him.
The inspiration for this cake kinda came from the Indian restaurant that me and my work colleagues visited the other day. For the First time i had Mango Lassi.... was so nice, tasted like milkshake but wasn't overpoweringly dairying.
The major problem however this time was..... THE CHOCOLATE!!! I know right... as if chocolate is ever a major problem lol... But this time it was. The person who was getting the cake doesn't like chocolate... so i racked my brain trying to think of substitutes.... Which led me to the Above DISASTER!
Then i thought about it a different way..... "Why doesn't he like chocolate?"
It turns out that he doesn't like the smell of it... And that sorted everything out, as well as confirming that i should be going with the potent smelling exotic fruits....
I decided to go in a different direction with it now finally! Mango White Chocolate frosting with a cheaper white chocolate so that the smell of it would not detract from the mango and alert him to the fact it was chocolate based. in the end it just tasted like mango ice cream (but not ice cream obviously).. was very lush. Passion fruits to trigger the nostrils initially and then the more subtle but just as delicious smell of the mangoes really drew you into this cake. The day I transported it to the party i had to go to work first in the day time, so the whole office smelt like a fruit cocktail lol.
On the inside was a cardamom infused sponge cake without the egg obviously. and running through it were strands of saffron for the color and for the subtle spice of it....
And then.... TADA!!!
The Left Over White Chocolate i just mixed with some cream cheese and butter to make a ganache kinda thing and added green food dye to tie in with the theme of the cake
And now, ill let you know how i made it!
Cardamom and Saffron Sponge With Mango Chocolate Frosting
Ingredients:
Egg-less Cardamom Cake:
175g Plain flour
50g Fine Cornmeal
400g Sweetened condensed milk
100g Butter
175ml Water
2tsp Baking powder
1tsp Baking soda
1tsp Vanilla extract
10 Strands of Saffron
2tsp Ground Cardamom
1/2tsp Salt
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees centigrade and Grease the bottoms of 2 9" cake tins and then set aside
2. In a Large bowl sieve the dry ingredients together and make sure they are all fully incorporated together (Salt, Flour, Cornmeal, Bicarbonate, Baking powder, Chopped Saffron and Cardamom)
3. Melt the butter and then add melted butter to the wet ingredients remaining minus the vanilla extract, so that's the Condensed milk and the water.
4. Mix the wet ingredients (now with the vanilla extract) into the dry ingredients and Incorporated fully with a wooden spoon of electric mixer if u are lucky enough to have one lol.
5. When fully mixed separate the batter evenly into the cake tins and even out the mixture before putting them into the oven for roughly an hour, check to see when the cake it done by using a skewer to see if the middle of the cake is ready or not.
6. When done, take both cakes out and set aside on cooling racks.
Mango White Chocolate Frosting:
Unfortunately i didn't do the measurements for this properly and it was all kinda doing it by eye and feeling my way through... but if you follow these directions you will know what to do when it comes to it.
ROUGHLY...
600g White Chocolate
350ml Mango Puree
25g Butter
1. Melt the Chocolate either in the microwave for a few seconds (stiring after 10 seconds), or in a ban marie over a stove.
2. Add butter to the melted chocolate
3. Pour Chocolate and butter mixture into a bowl and slowly add the mango puree, mixing all the time. When the mixture becomes stiff but manageable cover it and put it aside in the fridge until needed.
Green Chocolate Ganache:
100g Cream cheese
180g White Chocolate
80g Icing sugar
2tsp Green Food coloring
1. Melt the Chocolate
2. Remove chocolate from stove or microwave once fully melted and then stir in the cream cheese, icing sugar and green food coloring. It should go a kind of putty texture.
And VOILA!
Hope you guys like it as much as i enjoyed making it... pity i don't really like cake that much lol.
Until next time...
Enjoy \(^_^)/
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