Sunday Baking: Mango cupcakes

I love mango. I'd hesitate to say it's my favourite fruit: I'm far too indecisive for just one. One of the nicest parts about journeying to Malaysia was the opportunity to eat the fruit in a country where it grows; in fact, it was great to experience a variety of different fruits and I also developed a taste for pink guava juice, which is sold pasteurised and thick from the longlife fruit juice aisle in this country but still tastes close enough to keep me happy.

Last summer I had a good nose around a Malaysian supermarket and came away with a bottle of mango essence. I've been looking for a use for it ever since, and when I saw some dried mango in Tesco yesterday I decided to try out some mango cupcakes. I adapted the cupcake recipe from the gooseberry-elderflower cakes I made a couple of weeks ago, because it was a good one.

3 cups self-raising flour (guess who ran out of baking powder...)
2 cups caster sugar
8oz butter
4 eggs
1 cup pink guava juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
Packet of dried mango (mine was 130g)

First, deal with the mango. You can just chop it up and sling it in at the end if you like, but I wanted mine softened up and less sweet, so I cut it into little pieces and then soaked it in water for a couple of hours.

Stir the flour and sugar together and then beat in the softened butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Beat the wet ingredients together and add to the flour mixture in three batches, taking care not to overmix. Then stir in the mango pieces. Scoop into cupcake cases and bake at 180 degrees C for 20 minutes or so.

Frosting:
1lb cream cheese
Caster sugar to taste
1 tsp mango extract

Combine. Taste to make sure the sweetness is right. Smooth over the cakes and decorate with a piece of dried mango.