Kelly of Baking with the Boys chose this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Fresh Mango Bread. Kelly makes me laugh every Tuesday; ergo, I make a beeline to her blog every Tuesday. I knew from Kelly's blog posts that she would not pick anything with nuts; and I figured that something with chocolate was a good possibility, since Kelly really seems to love her chocolate. Mango Bread was definitely the dark horse -- anyone who had money on "Kelly for Mango Bread" did well.
Dorie says that mango breads are popular in the South. But I've gotta say -- I live in Alabama, a pretty Southern place, and I've seen mango bread around here about as often as I've seen
bumper stickers on pickups. But I am not from the South, so I didn't want to trust myself on this point. I polled some of my authentic Southern friends, people who were born and raised in such very Southern places as Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. My question: "Did you grow up eating mango bread? Dorie says it's Southern." I got responses such as these:"Mangoes are not a Southern food. I don't even like them, so they can't be a Southern food."
"Never heard of it. But if you deep fry it, you can Southern it up a little."
"Mango bread? That's a Yankee bread."
"Maybe she means WAY Southern. Like the Caribbean."
"I hear that mango bread is very popular in Southern St. Barts."
Well, Southern or not, the mango bread sounded great to me. It is a spice bread full of ginger, cinnamon, and lime zest, sweetened with both brown and white sugar, and studded with fresh mangoes and golden raisins. I started dabbling in yeast bread baking recently, and one thing about baking with yeast is that it makes quick breads like this one seem even quicker. This came together in a flash. Mix together the dry ingredients, add an egg/oil mixture, and then stir in the mango, raisins and zest.
Mmmmmmm, mango bread batter.
The only thing noteworthy about the batter mixing is that I needed two mangoes to get the two cups needed for the recipe (Dorie says that you'll get two cups from one large mango). I guess I just haven't bought enough mangoes in my life to know if mine were small, medium or large. Apparently they were not large enough to yield two cups diced.
This bread bakes for a LONG time -- one and a half hours. That sounded long to me, but seeing as I'm riding a streak of underdone baked goodies, I wasn't about the question Dorie on the baking time. I did have to tent the bread with foil about 35 minutes in to keep it from getting too brown on top.
This was delicious! I served it to David with ice cream when it was still a little warm. The bread is so dense that it's almost cakelike, so the cakelike presentation worked well (I did not garnish David's with mint; that was for artistic purposes only). I didn't serve myself the same mango bread/ice cream dessert; instead, I just cut myself an impossibly small sliver of it every time I walked by it, and since it was in the kitchen, where I lived last weekend, that meant that I ate approximately half of the loaf. I shared what was left with David's parents, who really seemed to enjoy it too.
Another winner from Dorie! Kelly, thanks for the pick -- we loved it here in the South!
