After making kiwi cupcakes last week, I decided to swap the kiwi for mango and make it a cake. I wasn't sure how well it would work; I'm certainly no baking expert. But I reasoned that by taste at least, kiwi and mango have approximately the same sugar and acid content, so it should be simple enough.

My recipe was essentially the same as the kiwi cupcake recipe, but my first order of business was to figure out how, exactly, you slice a mango. The last time I tried, I approached it like you'd slice an avocado. Er, no.



Once I'd sliced up the mango, I turned the oven on to 350 degrees and started on the cake.

Mango Cake

• 1/2c softened butter
• 3/4c superfine sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/4c self-rising flour
• 1/2c sour cream
• 1 finely chopped average-sized mango.

• Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy.
• Add eggs one at a time. I'm starting to get the hang of cracking an egg one-handed.
• Beat in the flour 1/4c at a time.
• Add in all sour cream at once and blend until well mixed.
• Add lemon juice and blend well. (I was planning on leaving out the lemon juice caused for the original recipe, but the batter seemed a tad thick so I ended up squeezing in approximately 1T of lemon juice and blending it in.)
• Fold in diced mango.
• I gave the batter about a one minute mix on medium at this point. I wanted to have large chunks of fruit, but also wanted the flavor to be spread out a little more in the cake.

I poured the batter into a floured, waxed paper lined 8x8 (or a 9 inch diameter round pan) metal pan and baked it about 25 minutes, until the top was just starting to turn golden.

Meanwhile, I went to make my strawberry frosting and discovered that my strawberries were moldy. Damn! I had a kiwi, but I thought it might be too tart. I had raspberries, but they have too many seeds, I didn't want to deal with it. And then my eyes alighted on the half bottle of Arbor Mist Exotic Fruits White Zin on the door of my fridge and thought ... well, that might be interesting.

Sweet Zinfandel Frosting

• 1/2c softened butter
• 4oz softened cream cheese
• 2c powdered sugar
• approx. 1/4c sweet wine--I'd measured out 1/2c and found the consistency I wanted came at about half that amount, but YMMV.
  

• Cream butter until fluffy.
• Add cream cheese and blend well.
• Add in powdered sugar slowly--I did about 1/4c at a time.
• Pour in wine and blend thoroughly.
  

Frost cake and refrigerate for an hour or so to let the frosting set. I took a quarter of the cake to my mom, who shared it with her husband and sister-in-law; I took half to work; everybody loved it! A couple of days later people were still telling me how great it was, and a couple people asked for the recipe. The cake was sweet and super moist; the mango pieces were incredible! And the frosting had a creamy, tart taste with only slight hint of alcohol flavor.