Tuesdays with Dorie #6:  Kelly of Baking with the Boys selected Fresh Mango Bread on page 45.

I had no preconceived notions about this recipe. I’m fairly neutral about fruit breads in general; pumpkin bread, banana bread, etc, are all good and I’ll eat them when offered, but I won’t go out of my way for them. So as I said, I had no preconceptions one way or the other.

I started out with Mexican mangoes which are a little smaller than the Florida mangoes found in most grocery stores. It took two of them to make the 2 cups of diced mango called for in the recipe.

I also soaked my raisins in rum before adding them to the recipe; I thought the rum would complement the tropical flavors of the recipe.

I mixed my dry and my wet ingredients, happy for another TWD recipe that didn’t use every bowl in my kitchen!

I added in the mango and raisins. I think next time I’d chop the mango into smaller pieces and add more of it. I think the bread would have been even better with more mango.

And finally I baked it in 3 small loaf pans, rather than one large one. I probably could have divided it into 4 pans and come out fine, but the 3 made nice sized loafs and gave me 1 to keep, and 2 to take to work.

I was going to wait until the bread was totally cooled before trying it, but it smelled so good and was calling my name. Loudly. I could hear it from the living room. So I had to slice into it and take a bite .. and then another. And then another. Before I knew it, I’d eaten a whole piece and sliced off a 2nd. That’s when I realized I had to walk away from the bread!

So although I had no preconceptions about this bread one way or another, I wound up really liking it. It was moist and fruity. I accidentally left out the lime zest (just plain forgot) but I didn’t really miss it. The flavor of the rum from the raisins definitely came through and the bits of mango were just lovely. As I said above, if I were to make this again, I’d chop up more mango into smaller pieces, but that’s just a small quibble.

I finally wrapped up the loaves to keep myself out of them. Oh, and the bread was a huge hit at work on Monday. Definitely a nice recipe that’s a tropical twist on the usual breakfast type fruit breads.

The recipe is available in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

Enjoy!