Mango Mini-Bundt Cake

Mango Mini-Bundt Cake

There's a reason I don't belong to Costco: I always end up "saving" money on stuff I never needed just because it was there.

I ran afoul of this same reckless mentality when Whole Foods had a sale on mangos: $10 for a box of 10. Of course, each individual mango still only cost $1, so you didn't have to buy a box. And you could have gotten the box even if you didn't buy 10 mangos. Yet somehow I came home with 10 mangos. And a box.

Not surprisingly, a week later, I still had a lot of mangos left, and they were getting pretty wrinkly. Usually I throw them away about then, but I couldn't bring myself to throw away that many mangos. Besides, I still had the box.

So I peeled the wrinkly soft mangos and put the flesh into a food processor, thinking I'd bake them into something since they were too ripe for eating. I discovered to my delight that I had caught them at peak sweetness and richness of flavor, and they were all a deep orange color. And not a black stringy one among them. Unbelievable. Perfect!

But I was already psyched to do some mango baking, and had found this recipe for Mango Cake on allrecipes.com. I was intrigued by the comments that the recipe doesn't rise much -- I've seen this before! I've found that some quick bread formulations just won't bake right in a loaf, but are perfect in a mini-bundt. And, other recipes that work fine in a loaf are too dry for mini-bundts. Clearly, there's something about that extra inside ring of baking surface area.

So I tried the original Mango Cake recipe in the mini-bundt pan and a mini-loaf pan. Sure enough, the loaf didn't rise or become cakey, but the mini-bundt did. Ah-hah! A breakthrough in bundt science!

I still had enough mango puree to make another batch, and this time I started to make the recipe my own. I fixed a few technical issues with the original recipe, like adding vanilla with the wet ingredients, and eliminating some unnecessary folding. I added extra flour, went to town on the lemon zest (Meyer, of course), yet still made sure it was mini-bundt moist.

The result: just about darned perfect!

Or, as perfect as a mango cake can get. Even perfect-ripe mango flavor easily gets lost in the baking, so this cake is very mild. Some lemon or lime glaze would go a long way.

The mango puree and buttermilk make this recipe still very much the original author's, but I see no point in trying to tweak it to rise properly in a loaf. This is a mini-bundt recipe. I can't wait until the next big Mexican mango surplus!