Mango and Chocolate Pudding cake

I'm fully back in the kitchen now, and thoroughly enjoying it all once again. I'm back meal planning and have even started taking my cookery books to bed me for a little light bedtime reading! Had some strange dreams afterwards though! This weeks book has been The New English Kitchen, its a couple of years old now but still a very worthwhile read if you are interested in making good food go that bit further, along with some great economical recipes.

Whilst I most definitely have a sweet tooth, I've doing a lot more savoury cooking lately but I just had to sneak this pudding cake in the other night - and I'm glad I did - it was delicious! So much so that quite disturbingly 3/4 of it went in one sitting......there was only two of us....! Note to self: dust off the Wii fit!

This particular cake came about as I was feeling all domesticated for some bizarre reason the other night, and whilst making dinner decided that we needed a nice cake for pudding. Not wanting all the faff of allowing it to cool, and icing it etc, I decided to make a simple sponge, tarted up and just made into a single layer, along with some tinned mango slices to turn it more into a ‘pudding cake’!

Delicious served warm with a lots of lovely custard

Makes 1 x 20cm sponge cake - would hypothetically serve 8..

Ingredients

45g light brown muscavado sugar

75g caster sugar

2 eggs

4 tbsp desiccated coconut

1 tbsp good quality cocoa powder, mixed with 2 tbsp hot water

120g self raising flour

120g softened butter/ stork margarine

1/2 tsp baking powder

½ tin mango slices

1 glace cherry, halved

Line a 20cm sandwich pan with baking paper (or even better a cake liner!) and pre-heat oven to fan 160/ gas 180

If using a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar for a couple of minutes, add flour, baking powder, cocoa, eggs, sugar and coconut, mix well until smooth and creamy. Alternatively, beat all the above ingredients together bit by bit!

Place the drained mango slices in the bottom of the pan, in a daisy type of pattern, with the cherry in the middle, cut side up.

Spoon over the cake batter and smooth over, bake for 25 minutes or until it passes the skewer test. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the pan and then invert onto a suitable plate or cake stand. Dust lightly with icing sugar and serve warm, though it will keep for a day or so in a cool room.

I am particularly pleased with my cake plate - I had been looking for one for ages, with budget in mind and picked up the blue one shown in the picture for a whole pound in poundland! Amazing what you can sometimes find in the cheapy shops!