Mango Upside Down Cake

To celebrate our 2^nd anniversary Adam and I took a cooking class at Charleston Cooks.  We learned all about Thai food while honing our knife skills and learning tricks to keep our eyes from watering when cutting an onion.  Our menu consisted of Yellow Curry, Pad Thai, Curried Vegetables and last but not least Mango Upside Down Cake!  We were in charge of the Pad Thai, but both of us agreed the dessert was one of our favorite parts of the whole meal.

So when some friends came over for dinner I decided to recreate the dessert.  I love that these are served in individualized portions.  In the class they made a papaya sauce to go over top of the cake, but I found that the cake was already super sweet and no sauce was needed. 

The cake is dense with a hint of mango.  There is barely any baking soda so it doesn’t rise much.  But the brown sugar/mango mixture melts leaving a sugary syrup that coats the entire cake and adds moisture and delicious-ness!  Between the 4 of us we downed all 12 and we were still wanting more. 

                            

Mango Upside Down Cake

(Makes 12 mini cakes)

1 stick butter

½ cup brown sugar (the recipe calls for 1 cup sugar but there was a lot left over so I halved it)

¼ tsp ginger

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

2 mangos (1 mango peeled, pitted and diced.  1 mango pureed into ½ cup mashed)

1 ½ cups all purpose flour

1/8 tsp baking soda

1 tsp kosher salt

3 Tbsps cream cheese, room temperature

1 ½ cups white sugar

1 egg

2 tsps vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Place 12 silicone baking cups in a muffin tin.

In a small bowl, mash together 2 tablespoons butter with brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg.  Spread the sugar mixture on the bottom of each cup and place the sliced mango on top of the brown sugar mixture.  This will fill up half of the cups, which I thought was a lot, but the cake doesn’t rise at all so it works. 

In a bowl stir flour, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.  In mixing bowl beat 6 Tbsps butter, cream cheese and white sugar.  Beat until fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla and beat until combined.  Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in thirds and mix.  After a third of the flour mixture is incorporated add ½ cup of the mashed mango.  (I mashed my mango before hand in a flood processor).    Add another third of the flour, combine and add the remaining mango.  Finish with the remaining flour.  If the mixture is too dry add a ½ cup of milk, but this will depend on how juicy your mango is.  Divide the batter between the 12 cups and pour the batter on top of the arranged mangoes.  Bake until the cake is golden brown and doesn’t jiggle, about 15-20 minutes.  Remove and let rest for at least 10 min. before inverting onto a plate.