Mango Brownie CupCakes

This is a simple experimental cake recipe that I tried inspired by the vegan brownies I found while googling and also taking a cue from Madhuram ie replacing fat (butter/oil) with fruit puree -mango puree to be exact and also inserted simple mango cashew paste within this. The result was simply delicious though few faults were there.

Ingredients:

Dry Mix:
AllPurpose Flour: 1 cup
Cocoa Powder: unsweetened: 2-4 tbsp (I used 2)
Sugar: 1 cup (I used only 3/4 cup)
Baking Powder: 1/2 tsp
Salt: 1/2 tsp

Wet Mix:
Mango Puree: 1/2 cup
(Can also use Veg Oil)
Water: 1/2 cup

Filling: (optional)

Mango Cashew Paste: few tbsps
Blended together finely hopped mango pieces and handful of cashew soaked in warm water to obtain a paste.This is completely optional

Preparation:

In a big bowl,whisk together flour,baking powder,cocoa,sugar and salt.Add in mango puree to the flour mix and then add half cup of water.Whisk into a well blended. Do not over beat it.

Pour a spoonful of batter into each of the muffin cups,spoon the mango cashew paste over this batter and if posssible thinly and gently spread this over the cake batter,without mixing together.Then,add spoonfuls of the cake batter till the muffin cup is three quarters full.You can also alternate the layers as well.If not interested you can avoid the filling layer as well.

It looks like..

Bake in a preheated oven at 375F for 22-25 minutes or till a tester comes (almost)clean.Mine took 23 minutes.The mango layer if added will be moist only and the tester may contain traces of the layer.If filling is avoided then the tester comes clean.The recipe gives 9+ cupcakes.

Alternately you can use a petit loaf tin and bake for 20+ minutes.You can spread choco chips on top if interested.Also instead of cocoa melted chocolate can also be use,but for making lowfat/vegan brownies,cocoa powder is preferred. The sugar used in the original recipe is 1 cup (I halved the recipe which can be found here).I reduced the sugar to 3/4 cup as I used very sweet Badami mangoes.I also reduced the cocoa powder to 2 tbsp rather than the required 6 tbsp as I did not want the bitter cocoa aftertaste in them.

After these adaptations,comes the bad news - the brownies turned out to be little denser,slightly peaked and one or two look slightly cracked. The denseness can be attributed to the presence of cocoa powder as cocoa cakes are supposed to be denser (as far as I know).Otherwise the reason behind these is overbeating the batter. In my enthusiasm,I overbeat the batter.So the cupcakes look slightly peaked.Why & How: overbeating the flour leads to gluten development which makes the product rise as baking powder is also added.The cracks are usually due to high oven temperature and need of extra baking time or too much sugar or baking powder. am not sure why only one or two cracked while others came out almost perfect.Sugar is the only reason that I can think of.

But the good point is the taste was amazing and I never expected the mango chocolate combo to be this delish.I started using mango in baked items after I enjoyed the mango muffins.This combo is very very delicious.

The cupcakes are on their way to Madhuram's Lowfat Baking Event along with Soya Dates Cookies.The cupcakes since mango based are also visiting Srivalli's Mango Mela where amazing mango dishes can be seen.