Mango and Cardamom Layer Cake

aka my annual birthday cake post

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This was never meant to be an annual post but here we are again; today is my birthday and this is my, now annual I guess, birthday cake recipe for 2024.

The reason I like to make my own birthday cake is simple, it’s not because other people don’t offer it’s more because I get to make exactly what I want, I get to have a play around with something new, and to be honest, it’s rare that my baking isn’t somehow connected to work so there is a freedom in just baking for purely for fun, for my own enjoyment. This year, I couldn’t get the idea of a mango and cardamom layer cake out of my head, so that’s exactly what I made. Maybe it’s the local mango shop, recently opening back up for this years season, or maybe it is my undying love for cardamom. Regardless, with the idea locked in, I wanted to make a simple cake that had as much mango flavour as possible. To do that, the cardamom cake is layered with both a mango buttercream and a mango compote.

Before we get to the cake I must tell you about the best birthday present I could have wished for. This morning, our neighbours dropped off a parcel which we had missed while we’re out yesterday. The parcel was from my publisher, but I wasn’t expecting anything from them. To my surprise and a huge amount of excitement, it was an advance copy of my new book Small Batch Cookies. Even after so many years of doing this job, there is something incredible about seeing all of your handwork finally turned into a physical product, in print, as the finished book. There is a little sneak peek of the book going up on my instagram later, with lots more to come over the next few months. For now, let me just say that the book is available to pre-order anywhere books are sold. And to give you the blurb that every author does (for good reason); pre-orders are incredibly important for the success of a book, it tells the retailer that people are interested in the book and it basically helps to get more eyes on the book, so thats essentially to say if you’re thinking of getting the book a pre-order is a huge help to me, thank you.   

Back to the cake. The compote was straightforward, it’s just a little diced mango, some lime juice, a touch of sugar and the smallest amount of cornflour to help the mixture form a gel to make it perfect as a cake filling. As the cake was for my birthday I treated myself to a couple Alphonso mangoes from my local mango shop and used these to make the compote. I cant tell you. How much I love having this shop on my doorstep, every year it makes a sudden reappearance with table after table piled high with boxes of vibrant yellow mangoes from India and Pakistan. Most often they sell a mixture of kesar and honey mangoes with a very rare appearance of the Alphonso variety. Alphonso mangoes are known as the king of mangoes and the flavour is incredibly special, very sweet, a little floral and so juicy that this is an eat over the sink type of fruit.

The buttercream was a bit trickier, normal buttercream includes a lot of sugar which would make the whole thing much too sweet, reducing the impact of the mango flavour. Something a little less sweeter than normal was needed, to allow the flavour of the mango to shine. I settled on a really old fashioned recipe, one that uses less sugar than normal and would allow me to use mango in a high proportion. The frosting in question is called ermine frosting, also known as cooked flour frosting, roux frosting or $300 dollar frosting. Ermine Frosting is an incredibly useful recipe to know, you traditionally make a mixture of flour, sugar and milk and cook it until it's thick, almost like a roux or a white sauce, and then once this its cooled it is beaten into whipped butter to make a light and creamy frosting. Ermine has the smoothness of a meringue based frosting but is much less sweet and tastes almost ice cream-like. Because of its ingredients and method, it’s also perfect for intensely flavoured buttercreams, like a very mango forward frosting. The frosting uses quite a lot of mango and you could, of course, make the puree yourself but you’d probably end up buying quite a lot of mangoes so instead, I used canned mango pulp from the supermarket. The canned variety is relatively easy to get your hands on, both of my local supermarkets stock it, and any Indian grocer will sell it too. The flavour of the pulp (it’s really a puree) is great, made with alphonso mangoes, or sometimes kesar mangoes, and a touch of sugar it is a great store cupboard staple that is perfect for baking. If you have any puree let over it also makes incredible sorbet.

The cake itself is a simple affair, a take on American white cake, made with egg whites for a pale and moist crumb. The cake is flavoured with a small amount of ground cardamom to give a delicious undercurrent which pairs beautifully with the mango.