TWD: Mango Bread

In a convergence of "how the hell did this happen?", I actually had all the things I needed to make this bread in the house. I know! I was excited, too!

I was looking forward to making something "everyday" from Dorie's book. Don't get me wrong -- I love the cakes and tarts -- but it's nice to make something that I feel slightly better about eating at three in the afternoon just before my little darlings come home.

On the Dorie scale of fuss, this was fairly low. It's a pretty standard sweet loaf bread/cake. There were some flavor additions that made it more interesting. It has a generous amount of ground ginger in it. The recipe called for golden raisins. I substituted my favorite Trader Joe's blend of dried fruit (golden raisins, blueberries, cherries, and cranberries). And there was fresh mango. My kids love the stuff, and it happened to be on sale last week (50 cents each!), so there it was in my fridge.

It only took two bowls, and I stirred by hand. I measured three different loaf pans until I finally found the right size. It took a long time to bake. And when I make something like this, I tend to err on the longer side. I've have more than a few loaves of something be less than done in the center and very done on the edges. I did have to tent this one to slow the browning.

It did make my kitchen smell wonderful. I was less enamored with the taste. For me, the overwhelming flavor was ginger. And not that that's a bad thing, but I would have liked for the flavors to be more balanced. I think that while the mango added moistness, it didn't bring much flavor to the table. The girl especially loved it. She had it for breakfast and snacks for two or three days. The husband enjoyed it as well. The boy was more on my side. I don't think I'm rushing out to make this again. I have other sweet bread recipes that I like better. Ah well. It was a good experiment.

Here's the loaf out of the oven. I was worried that it wasn't done in the middle and kept looking for it to sink.



Here's a top down view of the sliced loaf. Nice color!


I really like the way the dried fruit looks against the loaf. And you can see the mango chunks.


Thank you Kelly of Baking With the Boys for getting me to try something new. If you'd like to give it a try, go check out her blog for the recipe.