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Monday, May 31, 2010

Mango Cotton Cheesecake with Mango Crown



Looked pretty from the top?

Please don't look at the sides. Hedious!!! Absolutely hedious!! Cos I did this in a regular pan and forgot to grease the sides. I tried to release the sides with a knife when it was fresh out from the oven to avoid cracking whilst cooling and I mutilated the cake's side.

This is not a first time baking with mangoes. My 2nd infact. My 1st experience was a birthday cake for Mike, a Baked Mango Cheesecake. He asked me to discard the whole cake. That's how bad it was.
Reason: The whole cake tasted and smelt green, green like grass. The colour was a dirty yellow, like clay in yellow ochre.
Why did this happen?
Because I used Chok Anan mangoes to do it.
Sure or not it's the mangoes fault??? Sure la.... Even the decorative top turned dirty yellow in just 3 hours.
The blog where I got this recipe from said her cake was ok, but she could not recall the type of mango she used, even when I sent her pictures. But she said, it was a Thai mango.

I've got a friend who tried my Orange Yogurt Muffin Cake, and she ran out of plain yogurt and used her cup of mango yogurt instead. She told me the cake turned into a dirty looking cake with a grassy smell. See... It's not me blaming it all on the mango. Chok Anans are one of the most common mangoes for sale here. And it's one of the cheapest too, so I'm not surprised that manufacturers will use this mango for their "real fruit yogurt".

So, it seemed that it's the type of mango used that will affect the cake, not any mango can be used for baking. So which type? I had to experiment.




This time, I used Golden Lily mango, another common Thai mango. And the result was better.

Oh why did I do a cotton cheesecake to try out the mango??
Cotton cheesecakes are easier to eat and finish off compared to regular creamy cheesecakes and the main reason is that it uses less cream cheese :)
I just want to know the outcome of baking with Golden Lily mango.

Mango Cotton Cheesecake

125gm cream cheese, room temperature
3 egg yolks
30gm flour
20gm corn starch
125ml mango puree

3 egg whites
70gm sugar
Pinch of cream of tartar

1. Preheat oven to 150/160C. Line the base of a 7 or 8 inch round pan, grease the sides
2. With a whisk or mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth.
3. Add in egg yolk one by one, beating smooth after each addition.
4. Mix in both flours until smooth.
5. Combine mango puree until everything is smooth. Set aside.
6. In a clean bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Put in cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks.
7. Add in sugar gradually and beat until stiff.
8. Fold 1/3 of egg whites into cheese mixture.
9. Pour cheese mixture into remaining egg whites and fold until well combined.
10. Pour batter into prepared pan. Put pan into another slightly bigger pan filled halfway with boiling water.
11. Bake for 45 minutes. Cool cake thoroughly before decorating with mango slices. Chill in fridge until time of use.

Mango Crown Topping
Mango slices
1 Tbsp Instant jelly powder
100ml water
1 Tbsp sugar

1. Arrange mango slices on cooled cake. Put cake in freezer while you do the jelly glaze.
2. Mix instant jelly powder, sugar and water in a saucepan.
3. On medium heat, bring to a boil and let it simmer for 2-3 minutes. Turn off heat. No need to cool down.
4. Remove cake from freezer and brush glaze onto mango slices. The jelly will harden upon contact with cold mango.






Although not very,very good, but better. The decorative top lasted 18 hours before turning brown and the interior of the cake was orangy brownish, but definately not dirty looking. Taste wise, ok, but it doesn't taste exceptionally mangoey on its own. The mango topping is a must. 

I wonder what sort of mango will give bakes a lovely mango flavour. Maybe Thai mangoes don't work, because they have a faint fragrance, as I read somewhere on the internet that mango flavour and fragrance diminishes upon baking or cooking, and only certain mangoes are suitable, but what sort of mango??? There are hundreds of mango varieties in the world. Will Indian mangoes work? Alphonso or Wira? They certainly taste and smell much  much stronger than Thai mangoes. I can't get Philipines Mango here... so I don't know about them.

Anyone that had success baking with mangoes, please share with me your experience. I am desperate to know. I hope to don't need to buy every mango in the market and test each one out.

51 comments:

  1. Beautiful decorated Mango Crown :)

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  2. Ooohh! This is so beautiful! Speechless....

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  3. This is so amazing! I'm glad the cheesecake turned out better than before. Decorating the top with mangoes must have taken quite a long time. You are so patient.

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  4. so nice and look great.

    you always put some nice photos make bloggers look hungry but i always put some disgusting photos make people feel not appetite to eat hahaha... so i need to link up u everytimes i put a disguting photos right.

    working ar... go to work la.... u owe a lot money do u know tat!!!!

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  5. It looks like a blossom yellow flower...
    Yum yum..

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  6. Eh, this wasn't here when i visit this morning...so u know sometimes i come here a couple of times...hee..hee..

    The cake is SO PRETTY! How u do it? The outer layer 1st? So how many mangoes You used for the whole cake?

    Have you tried local apple mangoes before? Then there's a type the smell is quite strong,small in size... i forgot what it is called though. But we don't usually get in the markets la, usually planted in backyards.

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  7. Wendy, this looks so pretty! Love the well-arranged mango crown!

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  8. It's beautiful Wendy! The presentation is so amazing, from top of course, hehe! Come on....give us a shot of the side view so we can see how dodgy it is, hehe!

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  9. DG, Kitchen Corner, Swee San, Angie, Sonia,

    Thank you , thank you!!!

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  10. Esther,
    Actually it's not that difficult. I just slice the mango and arrange it all in the same direction. Took me about 5 minutes to finish arranging it.

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  11. Voon,
    You want me to neutralise the damage you did by posting Vanessa's chocolate cake ah????

    Even my pictures cannot help you lor. Whenever I think of that shot... I felt... urrghhh!!!!

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  12. Anonymous,
    Yeah, I intended this to look like a flower.
    Very easy to do and pretty.

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  13. Mel,
    Haha, my posts are usually posted anywhere between 10.30 to 12pm.

    Yup, arrangement start from the outside in the same direction, just keep on layering. It depends on the size of the fruit la, this time my golden lily is bigger, so, only 1 fruit.

    My house in Kampar got 1 apple mango tree. Actually hoh, Indian mangoes taste and smell like apple mangoes lor, the same type of aroma. Neh, the Wira variety that you can get at Jusco, yesterday I saw Ranee also. I'm curious about Alphonso, whether they smell like them, as Ranee, Wira and Apple smell and taste similiar.

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  14. Quinn,
    Hahaha, you are being so mean!!! Meanie Quinny.
    You can see a bit of the dodginess in the 3rd cake pic. Why la, you want to see the bad things in life, makes you lose appetite ler.

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  15. Like a yellow rose! Lovely cake. :)

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  16. Well done, Wendy! Must be lots of work in slicing the mangoes. I love mangoes! Have a nice day.
    Cheers, Kristy

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  17. Honey Bee Sweets, Pigpigscorner
    Thanks :)

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  18. Kristy,
    Thanks
    No la, not too much work. Slicing the mangoes took me just 2 minutes.

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  19. I've never tried decorating my cakes this way ... Kudos to you! Just curious, how long did it take? Hmmm ... I'm not sure which type of mango works best ... I do know some people cheat by using fake mango flavoring. Ugh!

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  20. Very pretty cake, like a blossom flower. With the generous amount of mangoes used as toppings, must be yummilicious too~

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  21. Pei-Lin,
    10 minutes??? Peeling, slicing, arranging.
    This is so much faster compared to my Jap Strawberry Cakes. That'll take me 30 minutes :)

    Nothing complicated. Just lay them from the rim spiraling to the center,

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  22. Hearty Bakes,
    It's just one mango for the cake, another mango for the crown. That's it.

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  23. Looks almost too pretty to eat. ;)
    So I give: What makes one type of mango better to bake with than another? Is it that some are too soft and break down too much? Or that some don't have a flavor complex enough?

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  24. I love the crown! It's beautifully arranged.

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  25. Carolyn,
    Flavour, fragrance and colour effect.
    Every cultivar of mango taste and smell differently. And even with these 2 mangoes that I've tried, they gave me different results.

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  26. Carolyn,
    I puree them when I bake, so it doesn't matter if they break down or not.

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  27. very pretty!!! how come no side pic keh? hahahahaha

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  28. The mango here looks amazing! So pretty! Almost too pretty to eat... almost. I love mango anything so I'm sure I'd manage to destroy the perfection and devour it!

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  29. Hi Wendy, the deco is so pretty. I done this b4 but using peach and not as pretty as urs and cos I used aga aga as topping so cant see the design too :(

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  30. Manglish,
    Why la, all you people like to look at ugly things

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  31. Jess,
    Yes, I saw that before.
    This mango is sliced much thinner than the peaches you used, and therefore can be arranged in a more flower like way.

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  32. I once read somewhere that to get mango flavour in your baking, it is almost always necessary to use mango essence or mango oil. Using fresh mango alone is usually not enough to get a vibrant flavour because as you say it diminishes while cooking.

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  33. Sharon,
    Thanks for the suggestion but I'm looking for natural flavour, colour is secondary.

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  34. I was talking about flavour.... not colour! The mango essence doesn't do anything for the colour of the cake. It's like using vanilla essence. You use it to flavour something, not colour it. Also it is natural because it's derived from the mango fruit. Like this: http://www.ititropicals.com/iqf-mangoes, or this: http://www.ajantafoodproducts.com/flavouring-essence.html.

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  35. Sharon,
    Thanks for the recomendation,I knew you were talking about flavour as I said colour is secondary, which meant flavour was primary, and I want it to be in real fruit form, natural.
    I'm looking for the "mango", the real mango fruit that will still retain its flavour throughtout baking, and I do not plan on using the easy way out on flavouring the cake, eventhough it's derived naturally from fruits. I'm just curious about mango in baking.

    Same goes for coffee. Although I know that coffee oil will give me a strong coffee flavour but I won't use it, and try to search for the best coffee powder to flavour the cake. Some instant coffee taste nice when made into a drink, but it's not nice when baked into cakes.
    That's when my curiosity starts.

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  36. Great looking cake! I can never make this for I can't slice mango thinly :P I can only admire your pics and drool over it.

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  37. Blessed Homemaker,
    Sure boh???? You can't slice like this???
    Hard to believe leh.

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  38. Fresh mango never gives a good flavor, when baked into cakes (or has never in my experience) but mango concentrate works really well - NOT pulp or juice (the one I used before was a 5x concentrate, and very tart). For the top of cakes, I've needed to soak mangos (and apples, and other not-that-tart fruit) in water with a bit of lemon juice (or just coat it in lemon juice) for it to stay colorful.

    The varieties you mentioned, and probably have available to you, are all much sweeter/perfumey and I'm not surprised they bake into a brown mush with an odd flavor. The type I buy a lot (I'm in the US, and these are all over the place) are green skinned, very round ones, like the Kent mango: http://www.freshmangoes.com/varieties.html They're a lot tarter than the kidney shaped/all yellow/smaller ones, and work really really well on top of tarts/etc. (They're still not as good as concentrate inside cakes - at least if the cake is baked for a while).

    If you can't find concentrate, I'd probably try to make it at home (take a lot of mangos, puree, add lemon juice and maybe sugar if its too tart, cook it down, strain, etc).

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  39. Anonymous,
    Oh thanks alot for this reply. This is what I really need.

    Those mangoes that I used are not perfumey at all, they only have a very slight fragrance compared to Indian strain mangoes.
    I've never had any Kent mangoes, here and I don't think I will ever get them here. But I think they are more towards the Indian strain of mangoes, because my Pomiculture lecturer once said that there are 2 major strains of mango and the Indian variety is rounder and more fragrant, compared to others that are flatter and longer, and like you said, kidney shaped.

    I think I might give mango concentrate a try as that is really easily available here, and they are made from real mangoes, but sweetened, as they are meant to be mixed with water as a beverage. I use that to make jellies and puddings :)

    Thanks a lot for the tip on how to retain the colour of the mango. I'll do that next time.

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  40. the crown is so pretty! cotton cheesecake with mangoes are brilliant!
    How do you know that the mango is sweet or sour? If accidentally I bought some sour mango, will it ruin everything?

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  41. Carine,
    I have no idea besides cutting up and eating it.
    But basically, I look at the base tip of the mango. Mostly the tip needs to be rounded rather than pointy. My mom told me, if it's been on the tree long enough to mature, the tip will grow round. If it's been picked too early and left to ripen at room temperature, it might look ripe, but taste sour. We used to have 3 mango trees at home, and my mom is the master in selecting and picking them at the best time.
    Pickle those sourish mangoes, or juice them with added sugar. I don't think they should be added in here.

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  42. Hi Wendy,

    love the mango deco =) looks amazing. I'm an avid fan of mango cheesecake and I usually use mango pulp for my cake.It turns out super yummy.I use this recipe : http://majdinakamarulzaman.iluvislam.com/?p=16

    But so far,I havent managed to find mango pulp in msia. Happy baking! =)

    ~Khadijah~

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