Mango Torte Cake

It’s almost a year and three months I have posted anything on my blog.  The blog was completely ignored.  The traffic was sluggish.  But I was using it as an online cookbook for referring my old recipes.  So many things took priority over blogging and I had to ignore it for a while.

Our firstborn, Nathan started his first year of college now.  We miss him so much.  Luckily, his college is not that far away from home, so we pick him up on the weekends.  The other two seems to be very quiet without him and our home cheers up when he is home on the weekend.  I feel excited to cook something special for him when he comes.  My daughter thinks he is treated as a guest now..lol.

All these months when I was not blogging, my kids and husband kept motivating me to blog.  He even started telling his co-workers to check out my blog for recipes.  Many of my friends and relatives inquired about the blog.  Since I was re-posting all the memories on fb, some thought I was still blogging.  I knew that I had to rekindle the fire of cooking passion and blogging somehow.  I am trying to find some time for the things I am passionate about.  The mundane routines had to be adjusted and I have to find sometime for myself.  I am feeling already excited jotting down few words for this post....

So here comes the first recipe of 2020....a Mango Torte Cake.  For Nicole’s birthday we decided to go with a fruity tropical flavor to get some summer feel in the winter.   I baked 2 Mango Torte cakes to celebrate her birthday at the church.  They were small 2 cakes, so there was no leftover and I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures.   Nathan is the huge critic of my food in our house.  After enjoying the cake at church he came to me and told me “Its a keeper Mom!”.   So I decided to bake a loaf size cake just for us to enjoy and click few pictures.  It was easy to make and assemble.  The decoration may not look that good, but it tasted truly tropical which was much needed for this bone chilling weather.  Hope you will give it a try and let me know.

Ingredients

Vanilla Cake base

1 cup - all purpose flour

1 tsp - baking powder

1/2 tsp - salt
sugar - 3/4 cup

1/2 cup - butter (1 stick)

1/2 cup - milk
2 - eggs
1 tsp - pure vanilla extract

Directions

• Pre-heat the oven to 350 F.
• Line a loaf pan with parchment paper.
• In a sauce pan, add milk and butter.  Warm it till the butter melts.  Turn off the flame.
• Sift together flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl.
• Beat the egg and sugar together to form a fluffy mix using a stand mixer or hand mixer.
• Add the warm butter & milk mix into it.  Add the vanilla extract and mix well.
• Gently fold in the flour mix into the wet ingredients till everything is mixed well.
• Transfer the batter to the prepared loaf pan.
• Bake it for 25 - 30 minutes till a tooth pick comes out clean when tested.

Mango Curd
1 cup - Mango puree/pulp
6 tbsp - granulated sugar

1 - egg yolk
1 - whole egg

2 tbsp - corn starch
1/4 cup - heavy cream
1 tbsp - butter

Directions:

• Whisk the egg yolk and egg in a separate bowl till well mixed.
• Whisk together the sugar and mango puree/pulp in a heavy bottom sauce pan and simmer it over a stove top.
• Take a ladle of the hot mango puree and mix it to the egg mix and whisk it well to incorporate it.
• Lower the flame of the stove.
• Now add the egg mix slowly into the sauce pan with simmering mango puree and whisking the hot mango mix at the same time using a hand whisk.
• Whisk in the corn starch and increase the flame to medium heat.  Whisk continuously till the thick consistency of curd (yogurt) is attained.
• Turn off the flame and add 1 tbsp of butter and 1/4 cup of heavy cream and mix well.  Let it cool completely.
• Transfer to an air tight container.  Place a plastic wrap just above the mango curd to avoid skin formation.  Keep it in the fridge till ready to use.

Fresh Mango filling
1 mango - cut into small bite size pieces
1 - 2 tsp - sugar depending on the sweetness per your preference

Directions:

• Add the sugar to the mango and let it sit at room temperature for 15-30 minutes.  The juice of the mango will start to ooze out.
• Cover and keep it in the fridge till ready to assemble the cake.

Whipped Cream:
2 cups - unsweetened heavy cream/whipping cream
6 - 8 tbsp - powdered sugar
1 tsp - pure vanilla extract
2 tsp - meringue powder

Directions:

•   Whisk together heavy cream, sugar, vanilla extract and meringue powder in the chilled bowl of a stand mixer till stiff peaks are formed.

How to assemble the cake:

•  Cut the cake loaf into 3 layers.
• Apply some whipped cream on the cake stand and place the bottom layer of the cake.
• Divide the whipped cream into 3 parts.  One portion should be more than the other 2 which will be used for crumb coating and covering the whole cake.
• Divide the mango curd into 3 equal parts.
• Apply one portion of the mango curd on the first layer.
• Then top it with whipped cream and half of the cut mango pieces without the juice.
• Place another cake layer on top of this and repeat steps 5 & 6.
• Again place the last cake layer and repeat steps 5 & 6.
• Crumb coat the cake with the remaining whipped cream and decorate it with the rest of whipped cream per your creativity.
• Keep it refrigerated till ready to cut.

Notes:

•  I didn't use any simple syrup to moisten the cake layer.  You can use simple syrup to make the cake even softer.
• Keep the whipping cream in the refrigerator till ready to whip, otherwise it will not form stiff peaks.
• Over beating the whipped cream will end up in curdling the cream.  So make sure to test the cream for stiff peak after every 30 seconds.
• To make things easier, you can bake the cake and prepare the Mango curd ahead like a day before.