My Almost Vegan Mango Cake – A Refreshing and Light dessert for Hot Summer Days

Since the mango season is in full swing here in Bali, you can find different variants of this delicious and sweet fruit at almost every fruit seller’s shop, and also my flying vegetable vendor always has a few kilos of mangoes available.

Besides being used in delicious smoothies (like the one I shared here), our mangoes are also perfect to be used in other desserts.

I had had the idea of preparing a no-bake cheese cake for my family, like the lemon cheese cake I prepared some time back, but cream cheese just seemed to heavy and too stuffing for our hot temperatures.

So, I decided to try something else…

Let’s see what I came up with:

Ingredients (for a springform of 14 cm diameter*):

• 100 g Cookies (I use Marie Susu biscuits**)
• 50 g margarine (butter**)
• 100 ml coconut cream
• 100 ml water
• 1 tablespoon sweetened condensed milk (optional**)
• 1 ripe, medium sized Mango
• 1 package (7g) white or transparent Agar-Agar

Preparation:

* If you want to use a bigger springform, just multiply the ingredients accordingly. For example, for one with 22 cm diameter, you’d need roughly 3 times the quantity of my ingredients.

** If you want the cake to be vegan, just use margarine, and leave out the condensed milk, and be careful to use vegan cookies for the base

Let’s prepare the cake base first. For that, place the cookies in a food processor, and shred them until they are crumbles.

Melt the margarine or butter in a small pan, and add it to the cookie crumbles. Process the mixture a bit more, so that the butter gets incorporated well into the crumbs.

Line the bottom of your springform with baking paper. Pour the margarine/cookie mixture on top of it, and press it into a dense, even layer. This can be done easiest with the help of the bottom of a round glass. Place the springform with the cake base in your fridge until we’ll have the filling ready.

To prepare the filling, peel the mangoes, cut as much flesh as possible off the stone, place it in the Cup of a blender, and blend it to a purée.

Then, pour the coconut cream, water and condensed milk into a pan. Bring it to a boil, add the agar-agar powder, and simmer the liquid for 2 to 3 minutes, while constantly stirring it with an egg beater.

The mixture will change it’s color and density slightly when the agar-agar is activated.

Remove from the stove, and let it cool down for 1 to 2 minutes while continuing to stir it with your egg beater.

Pour the content of the pan on top of the blended mango, and mix well with your egg beater.

Take the springform with the cake base out of your fridge, pour the mango mixture on top of the cake base, and slightly beat the springform onto your working surface to get rid of eventual bubbles, and even out the top of the mango mixture.

Cover the springform with a silicone lid or plastic foil, and place it inside your fridge for about 3 hours to let the cake set.

When the 3 hours have passed, take the springform out, carefully remove the silicone lid, avoiding condensed water drops falling onto the cake’s surface, and open the springform.

My cake immediately peeled away from the springform’s border, but if yours doesn’t, use a damp knife to cut along the springform border.

Use a damp knife to cut the cake into slices.

Serve and enjoy!

If you don’t eat the whole cake at one time, I recommend you to put it back into the fridge as soon as possible.

I don’t know how long the cake could be stored in the fridge, as my family devoured it within less than 24 hours, but it should be ok to store it for 1 or 2 days if always kept inside the fridge.

My family absolutely loved the cake. Since there was no cream cheese used, the cake was very fresh and light. A perfect dessert for hot days.

Most probably, it should be possible to prepare the cake with other puréed fruits, too. What would be your preferred fruit to try?