Nothing’s more inviting than the aroma of just-baked homemade goodies…

For these holidays, if you are looking for something different to bake other than the usual cookies, then you have landed on the right blog post. I am sure you must have tasted or at least heard of chocolate whoopie pies and pumpkin whoopie pies. Now let’s think totally out of the box and make whoopie pies with a totally different ingredient other than chocolate and pumpkin. How about we make whoopie pies with fresh ripe mangoes, doesn’t this sound interesting? Even I felt quite interesting when this idea struck me after a few days of thinking and searching for creative and different recipes using fresh mangoes.

The National Mango Board is running a contest in Foodie Blogroll and has challenged the foodies to post an original recipe using fresh mangoes. As soon as I saw this contest, I wanted to participate in this contest, as mango is one of my favorite fruits and I grew up eating lots of mangoes. Hence, I challenged myself and thought of the different ways of making some original recipe out of fresh mangoes. Since it’s Christmas season, I wanted to make something sweet and creamy. I suddenly felt whoopie pies would be a good one to have and I added fresh mango pulp while making the batter. I’ve never tried baking whoopie pies at home and so I was really excited to make this for the first time in my kitchen with mangoes. With all confidence I baked the mango cakes and was totally blown away when the mango cakes actually came out pretty good from the oven. Then I made the creamy frosting and generously smeared it between the mango cakes.

The mango cake was really soft and velvety; the rich frosting gave an extra creamy kick to the whoopie pies.

Mango pulp: Blend slices of ripe mango with little water to make thick mango pulp.

Mango Whoopie Pies:

For making Mango mini cakes:

Ingredients:

• Fresh mango pulp or canned Mango Pulp- 1 cup
• Butter, unsalted, melted- 1 stick, 6 ounces
• Light brown sugar-1 cup
• Eggs, large at room temperature, lightly beaten-2
• Ground cinnamon- 1/4 tsp
• Baking powder-1 tsp
• Baking soda-1tsp
• Pure vanilla extract -1 tsp
• Salt- 3/4 tsp
• All purpose flour-1 2/3 cups

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 35o F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
• In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter and brown sugar.
• Whisk in the eggs, mango pulp, ground cinnamon, vanilla extract, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
• Fold in the flour into the above batter.

• Drop 12 moulds of batter, spaced evenly, onto each cookie sheet.

• Bake until sparingly to the touch, about 10 minutes.

• Transfer to a rack to cool completely.

For making Frosting:

• Cream cheese, chilled-4 ounces
• Confectioners’ sugar-1cup
• Butter, softened-1/2 stick
• Vanilla extract-1/2 tsp

Preparation:

• Using an electric mixer, cream the softened butter with the cream cheese.
• Mix in the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla extract on low speed.
• Then beat on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Making the whoopie pies:

• Spread the flat side of one mango cake with the cream cheese frosting and top with another mango cake. Repeat this with other mango cakes.

Tips:

You could make pumpkin whoopie pies, by substituting pumpkin puree for mango pulp.