Mango Cake Bites

When I was shopping at Whole Foods the other day, I picked up one of their free monthly recipe cards.  The one that caught my eye was for a ~ Mango Cake Bites ~ cookie recipe.  It's gluten-free, has no added sugar (it relies on mango puree for sweetening), and it's vegan.  It sounded interesting, I had some almond meal in the fridge, some frozen mangoes in the freezer, and just enough cornmeal in the pantry to make a batch... so, I decided to give it a try when I got home.  

The combo of almond meal and cornmeal makes for an interesting texture, almost 'cake-like' (guess that's how they came up with that name), in a non-wheat flour sort of way.  Since I was using frozen mangoes I skipped adding the little diced mango on top, like the recipe called for.   Even though the mangoes were sweet, the mango puree didn't give the cookies enough sweetness for my liking, so I added a white chocolate chip to help them out...but, it was still lacking.   I just think the recipe really needs some type of sweetener to give it a better taste/flavor.  Maybe some honey (if you don't care if it's no longer vegan), brown rice syrup, or some other type of sweetener replacing some of the mango puree.  My guys didn't really care for them (no big surprise there), so if I ever try them again, they will need some tinkering.   All-in-all, I am glad I tried making them...it's always fun to try new recipes, even it they're not a hit.