My fiance and I watched Top Chef Masters the other night. It was the episode where the chefs cook a special meal for returned military personnel and the partners of those personnel tell the chefs what their partners favourite foods are. It got my fiance and I talking about what we would tell a chef to cook for each other in the same situation.
It was easy for me to choose what my fiance would want – sausages, chicken schnitzel, lettuce salad, potato chips with garlic aioli, orange self saucing pudding and apple pie with lashings of cream. When it came to my fiance choosing what I would like the only thing he could identify, other than my dream dessert of anything chocolate with salted caramel sauce, was ingredients I like. The list included oven roasted tomatoes, basil, garlic, caramelised onions, roasted pumpkin, parsnip, raspberries, lemons, baby spinach and mushrooms. Strangely enough, despite my love of food, I don’t actually have a favourite “dish”.
Maybe I’m greedy, or maybe I’m just indecisive, but I couldn’t pick one dish that stands out as a favourite for me. Or maybe I haven’t discovered “the” dish yet.
One of the good things about food blogging is the great variety of foods you get to eat. Always in search of new recipes and foods, I am always trying new things. Some turn out fantastically and get added to our regular repertoire and others are disappointing. But through it all you always learn something. You learn new techniques and new flavour combinations you would have never tried before.
Mango and coconut is a wonderful flavour combination, a taste of tropical paradise. So it was with this combination in mind I made this Mango Coconut Cake with Lime Icing.
Mangoes are so lovely at the moment that I couldn’t help but want to use them in a recipe. I also wanted to see if I could get my mango hating fiance to enjoy mango. And guess what? It worked! This Mango Coconut Cake is a lovely light crumbly and moist cake which combines mango pieces, shredded coconut and coconut milk. A slice of tropical paradise.
So tell me, if you had to design the perfect meal for a chef to cook for you, what would it be?
Mango & Coconut Cake
Ingredients
- 110 g of butter softened
- 220 g of caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 185 g of plain flour sifted, all purpose
- 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder sifted
- 165 ml of coconut milk
- 2 mangos diced
- 1/2 cop of shredded coconut
LIME ICING
- 1 cup of icing sugar
- 1 tablespoon of melted butter
- juice and zest of 1 lime
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 160 celsius (325 Fahrenheit) and grease a 20 cm (8 inch) spring form tin.
- Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and beat until light and creamy.
- Gradually add the eggs and beat well between each addition.
- Fold through the flour, coconut, baking powder, vanilla extract and coconut milk until combined.
- Scatter the mango through the cake mixture and fold through. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking tin and bake for 55 to 60 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Let the cake rest in the tin for 10 minutes before placing on a wire rack to cool.
- When the cake is cool make the icing. Combine the icing sugar, melted butter and juice and zest of the lime until combined and you have a spreadable mixture, without being too runny. Spread over the top of the cake and top with slivers of mango and toasted coconut.
