Peach and mango yogurt cake

Finally summer is here, and it's so hot and muggy I'm not sure I'm so happy about the season change. If there's something I love about summer is fresh produce. Cherries, peaches, watermelons, loquats, apricots... I can't get enough of them.

For my labmate's birthday I wanted to make a cake with seasonal fruit. I was thinking of something light and more coffee cakey than anything else, since we were gonna eat it during our weekly lab meeting. After searching the net looking for a yogurt-fruit cake, I found a couple recipes that sort of convinced me, but not really. So I put my brains at work and invented my own recipe.

Soy yogurt, check.  Mango, check. Peaches, check. All sweetened with some brown sugar and honey and topped with slivered almonds. Yum!

The recipe is crazy crazy easy and takes an hour baking included. Feel free to substitute the fruits or change the soy yogurt for regular one. You might need to add a tablespoon or two of flour because soy yogurt is more liquid than regular one.

Printable recipe

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup soy yogurt
2 eggs
3 tablespoons soy milk
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon honey
1 stick unsalted butter
1 medium mango, cubed
2 medium peaches, cubed
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Preheat your oven to 350 F

Peel and cube the peaches and mango and set aside. In a bowl, cream the butter with the sugar and honey. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until combined. Mix in the soy yogurt and the milk (I added the milk after adding the flour because my batter seemed too dense, you can try not adding it if the batter seems runny). Coat the fruits with a tablespoon of flour, this prevents them from sinking in the batter. Add the rest of the flour to the batter and then mix in the fruit.

Pour the batter in a greased and floured 9-inch round pan and top with the almonds. Bake for 35 min or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Treat yourself to a light summer treat: mango sorbet

You don't need an ice cream maker to treat yourself to delicious home made mango sorbet. This little treat is lactose and gluten free (without the cone) and you can make it in the blink of an eye!

Don't go buy expensive sorbets full of preservatives and other nasty stuff. Go to your closest supermarket and get a couple of ripe mangoes and a lime, come on! go go go!

You're back? Good! Now let's whip it up!

Cut your mangoes in half and take out the flesh either with a spoon or by cutting it into cubes and then flipping the skin. Throw it in your blender or food processor. Add the juice of half a lime. If the mangoes are very ripe, you won't need any sugar. Blend the mangoes and lime and give it a taste. Add more sugar or honey if it isn't sweet enough. Throw it in a baking pan or plastic container and freeze it. After about 1hr in the freezer, break it down with a spoon, mix and let it freeze again. Repeat one hour later. This prevents the sorbet from having big chunks of ice. Now let it sit overnight and you've got your sorbet ready!

Before serving, pop it 20 seconds in the microwave to soften. It doesn't get any easier than this so... Enjoy!!!

The LOST finale cake, a.k.a flavors of the island (coconut and mango)

Ladies and gentleman, my LOST finale cake. Yes I did it. I'm nerdy and geeky. I couldn't resist doing something special for the finale of this show that's been keeping me breathless for days, weeks, months and years.

This cake though, is dedicated to my friend Dani. He's a big fan of  Lost, so much so that he's organized a big event in  his town in Spain, so that people can watch the show simultaneously with the west coast. In the craziness of organizing this, he asked me if I was gonna make a Lost cake. I said I wanted to make something but I wasn't sure what. He said 'well, think about the show and which flavors it makes you think about and make a cake with those flavors'. So I thought mangoes and coconut, and this cake was born.

The end result is a mango panna cotta, sandwiched between two layers of sponge cake. To make it even better, the sponge cake is soaked in coconut milk and topped with toasted coconut. And of course, I had to make something that reminded the famous Dharma Initiative logo. So I cut an eight sides poligon and left the center of the top empty.

Can you see the mango bits in the panna cotta? It's soft and creamy and you can taste that delicious mango. And the toasted coconut gives you a crunch while you're biting into that fluffly sponge cake. Are you drooling yet? Yes yes! I'm gonna give you the recipe.

Printable recipe

For the sponge cake:

6 eggs separated
150 g sugar
150 g flour

Preheat your oven to 350 F

Separate yolks and whites. Beat the yolks with the sugar until you get a creamy mixture that forms ribbons. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff. Incorporate the whites to the yolks very slowly trying not to deflate them. Fold from bottom to top with a spatula. Make sure your flour is sifted and incorporate it slowly folding until combined. Grease and flour two 8x8 inch pans and bake your sponge cake for about 20 min or until golden. Let the cakes cool.

For the panna cotta

1 medium mango, very ripe
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
2 envelopes of gelatin powder

In a food processor or blender, turn the mango into puree. Dissolve the gelatin in the recommended amount of water. Set aside. In a pot, heat the heavy cream with the sugar until 'cooked' but don't let it boil. When it's about to boil, take it out from the heat and mix it with the mango. Add the gelatin and mix well. Let it cool for a bit before assembling the cake.

To cut the cake in an eight sided polygon you'll need to freeze it. Otherwise, the panna cotta will collapse when you try to carve it. 

To assemble and cut the cake

Line an 8x8 inch pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Place one of the sponges at the bottom and pour the panna cotta on top of it. Put in the freezer for about 2 hr or until almost frozen. Cover the panna cotta with the other layer of sponge cake and let the whole cake sit overnight in the freezer. Remove the cake from the freezer and cut the three layers to whatever shape you'd like. Toast some coconut by placing it in a clean pan and heating it at high heat while moving it constantly. In the meantime the sponge will soften. Brush the top sponge with coconut milk. This will give it a nice look and make it sticky. Spread the coconut on top of the cake. If you want an empty space in the middle, just place a glass or mug on top of it.

Chill until it's time for you to devour. Hopefully this cake makes the end of Lost a little less bitter for you.