Mini vanilla cupcakes with mango frosting

Using recipes I know work well and searching for new ones to challenge and inspire are both important to me. This is why when I decided to make cupcakes for a colleague's birthday; I chose to scour the web for an untried mini vanilla cupcake recipe as well as some frosting inspiration. Once I had found the cupcake recipe here, it didn't take me long to find the ideal frosting for them courtesy of a link at the bottom of the webpage. The mango frosting appealed to me for two reasons, that of the flavour and also because of what was involved in making it. I was further intrigued by the fact that there was no icing sugar in the recipe. I must admit I had a lot of trouble hunting down mango puree and the thought crossed my mind to purchase mango/pear baby food. Thankfully, I came to my senses, as I couldn't in all good conscience have adults eat that as part of the frosting. By the time I got to the fourth supermarket, I settled on a can of organic mango chunks and proceeded to puree it including some of the juice in my food processor. I made the first part of the frosting recipe, set it aside to cool then made the cupcakes before returning to the frosting. I baked the cupcakes for eighteen minutes and probably could have left them in the oven for another minute or two because this morning I noticed a few of them in small sections had started to come away from their liner.

I believe this is the first time I have frosted cupcakes and not finished them with sprinkles. Don't get me wrong, I have loads of sprinkles, but none seemed appropriate. Instead, I used my Wilton 12 decorating tip to apply the frosting and was content with the result. Overall, it was a good combination and I look forward to trying more fruity options.