Mango Icing with Coconut Cupcakes

Ok…raise your hand if you don't adore buttercream icing. Sweet, rich, creamy deliciousness. Reason to angle for a corner piece of birthday cake. Good enough to scrape off the plate with a fork. I'm betting not many hands are up right now.

And yet…sometimes buttercream can overwhelm. Maybe it's too much richness for an already rich cupcake that needs some sort of topping. Or the sugary sweetness overwhelms the intended flavor of the icing. Sometimes flavor matters more than sweetness and richness. What's a baker to do?

I have no doubt that purists will throw up their hands when I say this, but one answer is a really interesting set of modified food starches with cryptic names like "Ultra Tex 3" and "Ultra Sperse." The interesting thing about these starches is that they have been modified to swell in basically any liquid. Unlike corn starch, which needs to be cooked to thicken a custard, these powders will thicken anything you can put in a blender without any heating. And the texture is smooth, consistent and creamy.

I'm finding that "custards" made with these starches make a really nice, light icing for baked goods. Say you want apple icing. Put some apples through a juicer (or just buy some cider). Put the juice in a blender. Turn on the blender. Add a couple teaspoons of Ultra-Tex while it spins. Done. And it tastes like apple. Maybe add a little powdered sugar to boost the flavor.

So that's what I did this week. Many of you know that I love mangoes. I wanted to make an icing that screamed mango, and would complement some sort of tropically flavored cupcake.

Decent mangoes really aren't available at this time of year. Happily, however, one can always get delicious canned Kesar mango puree from India. "Canned mango?" you may be asking, "really?" Yes, really. Mangoes from India are so good that the canned ones are still way better than the best supermarket mango in December. So my first stop was one of the little Indian groceries on Parliament in Toronto.

Then I poured a cup or so of mango puree into the blender, along with 2 tsp of powdered sugar (to make the flavor pop a bit) and a splash of milk (to thin the pulp just a tiny bit). I turned the blender on, and dropped in about 5 tsp of Ultra-Sperse 3 while the motor was running, letting it blend quite a bit between spoonfuls.

The result was a creamy, pudding-like concoction that did indeed scream mango. I put it atop these cupcakes from Epicurious, which I made last night (and to which I added a pinch of cayenne):

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vanilla-Bean-Coconut-Cupcakes-with-Coconut-Frosting-352095