Mango Upside Down Cake with Mango Ice Cream
I have so many mangoes that I don’t know what to do with them all. I give away a lot. That makes me feel good, and also relieved. At least a few that I don’t have to do something with. When I go and look at the trees, branches bent to the ground with heavy, fragrant, blushing fruits, I get a very ambivalent feeling. I love the fact that I have fantastic mangoes on the trees and I resent the fact that I have to take care of them. I can’t just let them fall to the ground and rot or become rodent food.
So, I look at the different possibilities and decide to freeze a lot. That postpones the decisions to another day. But I have actually done some stuff. We had a birthday here recently, and I did a mango-upside-down cake. Huge success. Everybody was raving over it. And baking is not my strong suit, so I was very pleased.
Some of the grandchildren were visiting and asked if I couldn’t make some mango ice-cream. I thought that was a very good idea, especially since they volunteered to both pick the fruits and cut them up. Although it seems to get mango juice all over the kitchen, it is still wonderful to see my eleven year old grandson wield the kitchen knife like a samurai sword and show me the proper way – according to him – how to cut up a mango.
He also enlisted a neighbor’s son to help him make a fruit juice made up of the mangoes, watermelon, oranges and limes. That juice disappeared so fast I didn’t even get a chance to take pictures! Here are the recipes for the cake and the ice-cream.
Ingredients For Mango Upside Down Cake
- 6-7 mangoes
- 2 sticks of butter
- 2 cups of flour
- 2 eggs
- 2 teaspoons of baking powder
- 1 cup of sugar (half brown, half white), If you want to
- A little vanilla extract. Maybe a teaspoon
- 11/2 cups of yogurt / sour cream / or cream fraiche
- A little salt
Method
- Grease a 9-inch pan, cover the bottom with brown sugar and put the fruit on top of the sugar. In a food processor with the baking attachment, cream the butter with the sugar until it becomes fluffy. Add the eggs and the vanilla extract.
- In the meantime, in another bowl, mix the flour with the baking powder and salt. Add the flour mixture, and the yogurt, a little at the time, to the egg mixture and make sure it gets mixed well.
- Pour it over the fruit and smooth it out.
- Bake at 350 degrees until you can put a toothpick in it and it comes out clean. Approx. 45 minutes.
- Let it cool a little. Put a plate over the cake and turn it. That is the most difficult part of the whole process.
Making Mango Ice Cream
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Summary
Jacqueline Campaigne
When we moved to Cat Island, 16 years ago, I knew we had found our paradise. But even paradise has its glitches. For a foodie like me, the lack of fresh veggies and meat, the scarcity of fish and the really bad assortment of wines was a bit of a challenge. I had to learn to cook in a whole new way. How to make an interesting salad out of carrots and iceberg lettuce, for example. Not so easy. If any of my ideas can make a dent in the traditional way the cooks of Cat Island think and serve dinner, I think it would be a step in the right direction. I might not be able to convert anybody, but I can inspire at least some of them. If you are reading my blog from afar, perhaps you will visit my cat island kitchen. I would enjoy cooking for you!