Mango Platter

November is the season for mangoes in Australia! Yippie! Finally, a fruit that makes me feels at home. About two weeks ago I went to Sydney Paddy's Market on Saturday for the first time. It was a fruits & veggies heaven. They even have those Asian hard-to-find fruits & veggies! I ended up buying so many green and red chillies, very hot red chillies, and 15 sticks of lemongrass. Because mangoes are in season now, many sellers offer mangoes in big boxes at a low price. We decided to get one box (around 30 mangoes) for $25.

Last week we were invited to our friend's home to celebrate Eid together and I planned to bring mango cupcakes. Usually I use 4-stars rated recipes to make sweet desserts. But this time I tried something else. I was reading through Coles Magazine where they featured a recipe for mango cupcakes and decided to use it. Since I'm still new in cooking world, whenever I read a list of ingredients I cannot imagine how the food would turn out like. So, I went with the recipe completely without changing anything. Unfortunately, it turned out that the cream was tasteless (I rechecked the recipe again and it didn't mention any sugar at all for the cream) and the cupcake wasn't sweet. 

Now this is the part where creativity is challenged! I added sugar and mango puree to the cream to make it more flavorful. It still didn't work. The cream is really yummy, but it's not stiff enough to decorate the top of the cupcake (because it wasn't butter cream). I was exhausted that night, so I stopped trying and kept the cupcakes in the fridge overnight. The next morning, I re-oven the cupcakes for 5-10 minutes. Surprisingly, the outside becomes yummy crunchy! Then I had the idea to make a mango platter: vanilla cupcake served with mango cream and diced mango. At the end, we munched the whole batch of cupcakes ourselves and brought store-bought cookies to our friend's home, hehe.

Ingredients:

• Vanilla cupcake:
• 160 gr, room temperature
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups self raising flour
• 1 cup milk 

• Cream:
• 200ml thickened cream
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 mango, pureed

How to make:

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Line muffin pan with paper cups.
• Beat butter and sugar until smooth and pale using mixer.
• Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla.
• Sift half of flour over mixture and fold in gently. Add milk and the remaining sifted flour. Then spoon into the muffin cups.
• Bake for 20 minutes. Leave muffin pan in the oven for 5 minutes, then let cool in wire rack.
• Serve on a plate with mango cream and diced mango.

Notes:

• If you want sweeter cupcake, I recommend to add 1/4 cup more of caster sugar
• If you want the cupcake to taste more vanilla-y you can add 1/2 tsp more of vanilla extract
• Best served when the cupcake is still warm and the cream is fridge-cool