I know Wendy won’t mind me calling her my blogging guru because firstly blogging is one of her many passions and secondly my blog would not exist if it was not for her extreme patience in introducing me to the wonderful world of blogging and teaching me how to use the themes and tools on Word Press.  One of my aims this year is not only to keep baking gorgeous cupcakes but also to become more adept at my blogging skills. Thanks Wendy for always being at the other end of the phone for all my questions and for all your time and ideas in setting up my blog.  

Wendy celebrated her birthday in January and I wanted to make her some cupcakes she hadn’t seen me bake or blog yet.  It was great when she let me know about the Cupcake Tower challenge on Foodnetwork, and when she said she rather fancied the key lime and mango cupcakes of one of the competitors, it gave me the idea to try them.  With no recipe available I experimented with these cupcakes for Wendy.  My vanilla cupcake recipe has proved the most successful so far and I have adapted this single recipe into so many different flavour recipes so I started with the basic vanilla cupcake recipe to which I added small gooey pieced of chopped mango.  Be prepared when working with mangoes to get sticky fingers and work surfaces as they are rich, gooey and juicy when you cut into them and they are not as well behaved as apples and pears on a cutting board.  The mango pieces need to be folded really gently into the cupcake batter so as to hold their shape while baking.  I added lime juice and zest to taste and baked them in dinky lime green and white polka dot cupcake holders.

Key Lime & Mango

As you can see this baking took a lot longer as I was so excited by the beautiful contrast of the lime and mango colours I had to photograph my ingredients before they even made it into the cupcakes.  My Joseph Joseph cutting board and measuring bowls provided the perfect backdrop to these colourful fruits in my photos and of course my new camera (soon to be blogged too) took the perfect photos for me to blog.

For a fruity frosting on the cupcake I made a mango and lime syrup which I reduced until thick and added this to my cream cheese icing.  I used a little of the remaining syrup and lime zest to decorate the cupcakes. 

Key Lime & Mango Cupcakes

Thanks Wendy for going the extra mile to help me in my new business and hope you enjoyed your Key Lime and Mango cupcakes.