We have reached the tail end of Mango Season here in South Florida.  And, my successful experimentation during last year’s mango season gained me a reputation at the office.  In fact, I think I got at least twice as many mangoes this year as I did last year.  They just kept them coming!  There are only so many mangoes you can eat before you kind of get tired of them.  After that, it’s time to get creative.  Mango Madness 2 was upon me before I even knew it.

Clearly, this was meant to challenge me.  After all of the things that I managed to make with last year’s mangoes, what was I going to come up with this year?

This, I actually managed to get mangoes of different species, too!  Aside from the Haden mangoes that I am used to, I also tried Keitt mangoes, Thai mangoes, and two others that I didn’t recognize.  It was interesting to see the different tastes and textures that each mango had, and try to make desserts that didn’t take away from the taste of the mango.  The challenge is to take a recipe and add the mango in a way that doesn’t affect the texture of the original recipe, but now features mango flavor.  This year, during Mango Madness 2, I managed to stumble upon or come up with a few more recipes that showcased the mango.

Not only goes mango chutney keep for a long time when properly stored, but you can make a lot at once.  It’s a great use of a surplus of mangoes, because you can use a lot of them up in one go.  A certain someone didn’t share her recipe, and I have yet to get impatient enough to beat it out of her.  I’m sure there are plenty of recipes online, though.

Replacing the pumpkin with mango puree in this recipe from Yammie’s Noshery resulted in some yummy mango chocolate chip cookies.  For extra mango taste, I replaced half of the chocolate chips with dried mango.

I used Bobby Flay’s recipe as the base for this mango caramel sauce, but replaced half of the water with butter.  After you add the cream, you might want to return the pot to the stove and cook the sauce down a little bit more before you add the mango puree.  If not, your sauce might be too runny.  It’s amazing on vanilla ice cream.

Replace 1/3 of each of the three milks in a tres leches cake with mango puree (strained as much as possible) and add 2-3 tablespoons of mango puree to the whipped cream topping.  That’s all it takes to make a mango tres leches.

If you want to make a mango creme brulee, resist the urge to add mango puree to the cream mixture.  Instead, infuse the cream with mango flavor by cooking the cream with chunks of mango in it.  Strain the liquid to remove all of the mango chunks before adding the egg yolks.

I noticed that mango is a pretty good substitute for pumpkin in a lot of recipes, and replaced the pumpkin with mango in this bar recipe to make Mango Pecan Bars.  These were surprisingly delicious.

Puree and strain a mango and add it to your favorite horchata recipe (I used this one) to make a mango-flavored version of this Mexican drink.  Yum!

Another takeaway from all of my mango experimentation has been that mango and cinnamon go very well together.  With that in mind, it was only a matter of time before I decided to try making mango cinnamon rolls.  These were a lot better than I was expecting.  In fact, they were better than they have any right to be, considering they were basically an experiment.

I shared the recipe, because it would be a crime to keep it to myself.  And, because a Google search of “mango cinnamon rolls” didn’t yield too many results.  The world needs to know that this can be done!

I must say that I really surprised myself with Mango Madness 2.  After all of the things that I made with mango last year, I can’t believe that I was able to make this many more unique treats.  There was still plenty of mango ice cream, sorbet, and pie to go around,k but I added a few new things to the roster.  The pressure will be on next year to come up with some new ideas.  Will we see a mango cream pie?  Some mango ice cream sandwiches?  Maybe a mango cake.  Oh, the possibilities…

And so, Mango Madness 2 drew to a close.  Until next year, we are now back to our regularly scheduled baking.  Stay tuned for more recipes and food adventures!