Humm(yum)ingbird Cake... My creative kitchen

I quite fancy the idea of making this cake as a Christmas cake. It's perfect for Australia, with all the tropical fruit that's fresh in season why go with raisins and currants when you could fill it with mango and coconut and pineapple?! I added the brandy (it's becoming a habit) and apricot to this to extra Christmas-afy it and made the icing mango instead of coconut. You could easily incorporate pineapple in this too. Like all good Christmas cake it's a biggy, but soo delicious, adapted from Real Living magazine.

You need:

* 4 medium ripe mangoes

* 2 ripe peaches or apricots, diced

* a splosh of brandy.

Batter

* 300g butter, soft

* 1 1/2 cups of castor sugar

* 2 tsps vanilla extract

* 5 eggs

* 2 1/2 cups of SR flour

* 2 cups of dessicated coconut

Syrup

* 2/3 cup water

* 2/3 cup castor sugar

Icing

*120g butter, soft

* 375g of cream cheese, soft

* 2 cups of icing sugar

* shredded coconut to decorate

Then:

Preheat the oven to 180c. Grease a large (22cm) cake tin, springform is good, anmd line with baking paper, let the baking paper come up the sides of the tin.

Get all the flesh you can off your mangoes, ditch the skins and seed, and puree it in a blender. This should make 3 cupsish, Set aside. 

Dice you peach/apricot and pop it in a bowl with a splosh of brandy to soak.

To make the batter: cream butter and castor sugar and vanilla in a bowl and smooth. 

Alternate mixing in the eggs, flour and coconut, beating in between each addition. 

Add 2 cups of mango puree and all the peach and brandy. Combine then spoon into your baking tin and bake for 1 hour 40mins. After an hour into the baking cover loosely with foil to help it not burn on top. 

Meanwhile make the syrup: Place water, castor sugar and half a cup of mango puree in a saucepan over a medium heat, cook for a few minutes until the sugar has dissolved. take off heat and set aside until cake is done.

Make the icing: Blend the butter and cream cheese until smooth ( you can do this by hand but a food processor will be easier if you are lucky enough to have one) Add the icing sugar and the rest of the mango puree - around half a cup. mix until smooth and thick - you may need to add more icing sugar, if it is too runny. Pop it in the fridge to help it get to a good spreading consistency, it shouldn't go hard though.

Assemble the cake: When a skewer comes out clean the cake is done, remove it from the oven and pierce it in several places with the skewer then pour the syrup over the top letting it soak into the cake. Allow the cake to cool completely in the tin. Ice the cake once it is cool and turned out of its tin. You can cut it in half and put icing in between as well, but I find that to be a massive pain in the butt, so I just make the outer icing really thick. 

A good trick I just learnt is to do a thin layer of icing first to capture all the crumbs, then recoat nice and thickly. Cover in shredded coconut, stand back, say tada and be showered with compliments! (apologies for the dodgy pictures, I couldn't ruin the mood lighting!)