If you like mangos, you'll have to try this mango

Elizabeth Baer is a teacher who loves to spend time in the kitchen. She also posts recipes and musings about food on her blog, culinursa.com/blog and can be reached at [email protected].

Top your mango cake with cut fruit, frosting or a simple dusting of powdered sugar.

We have a family of mango lovers, the most recent being our almost 1-year-old granddaughter Naomi. This means, of course, that I am always looking for new things to make with them. Whether I use them in a chutney or on a salad, or even for a "mango colada" (which I posted on my blog a while back), there is something about the taste that adds a wonderful sweet-tart flavor. One of our favorite dishes at Mint, the local Indian restaurant in Lee, is Chicken Aam Wala, with a mango sauce, something I have not seen in any other Indian restaurant I have visited.

When Passover rolled around this year, it wasn't enough to prepare the Seder. We added on both a baby-naming ceremony for Naomi, and a small family baby shower for our next granddaughter due this summer. And, true to who I am, I had to make different things for each of these occasions (which all occurred within 24 hours), so that each one felt special.

However, it was Passover, which means no regular flour and no leavening. (There are more complicated distinctions but it's not worth going into here.) I wanted to make something with mango for Naomi's event, and so I found a kosher-for-Passover banana cake recipe and decided to replace the banana with mango (plus one banana that needed to be used). Everyone loved it and thought I should definitely write it up.

But the recipe was for Passover, and I certainly wouldn't want to make a cake with matzah cake meal if I didn't have to. On top of that, because there was no leavening, this recipe required me to separate eight eggs! I figured that few people would want to do that, so I set about devising a new version.

For the mango purée, peel and cut a fresh mango and purée it in a blender, food processor, or with an immersion blender. Sometimes, when mangoes are in season, I’ll peel and and cut some into cubes for the freezer, which is fine for defrosting and puréeing. (Apparently one can buy mango purée, but I’ve never found it myself.)

It took a couple of tries, but we brought the final product when we went to visit Naomi recently. She was very happy eating it, as were we all! Because she is not even a year old, I left the cake plain and served it with fresh mango slices, although I think a cream cheese frosting or fruit-flavored buttercream (even the cheater's version I make) would be delicious, or even just a dusting of powdered sugar for garnish.

Serves 8-10

INGREDIENTS

1 mango, 3/4-1 pound, to yield about 1 cup purée

1 ripe banana

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper, and lightly oil with cooking spray or butter. If your springform pan doesn't close tightly or you are worried about leaks, wrap foil around the bottom and/or place the pan on a foil-lined sheet pan so you don't have to clean your oven afterwards.

To purée the mango, peel and cut into cubes. (You can do this ahead, keep in the freezer, and defrost when ready.) Purée using a blender, food processor, or immersion blender. Add the banana and purée to combine.

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In a stand mixer with the whisk attachment or using a hand blender, beat the brown sugar and oil together until well-combined. Next add the eggs and mix again until it begins to lighten a bit. Add the puréed fruit and vanilla and mix again.

Finally add the flour mixture to the batter in three batches. Beat to combine, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Pour batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 45-60 minutes, until the cake feels firm and springs back when lightly touched and a cake-tester comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan on a rack. Run a thin knife around the edge of the pan before opening the springform latch.

Serve with cut fruit, frosting, or a simple dusting of powdered sugar as garnish.

Elizabeth Baer is a teacher who loves to spend time in the kitchen. She also posts recipes and musings about food on her blog, culinursa.com/blog and can be reached at [email protected].