TWD: Mango Bread

I always think of mangoes as a "messy" fruit. By "messy" I mean that they're hard to eat without having juice all over your hands and face, and if you're me, all over your clothes, too. Granted, these "messy" fruits are often more than worth the mess -- juicy peaches or plums, ripe mangoes -- they are usually at the very peak of flavor. I didn't eat mangoes as a child because they were a little too exotic for my very narrow palate. My brother ate them though and I can remember that my mom had very strict rules for where he was allowed to eat mangoes: outside or over the kitchen sink. She did not want that sticky mango juice all over the house. Even though I now enjoy eating mangoes, I still haven't gotten past the prissy part of me that doesn't like to wear her food. And, I still haven't figured out how to eat a mango without getting the juice all over me so I just don't eat mangoes that often.

I *heart* spice breads. Zucchini bread, pumpkin bread, gingerbread, I love them all, and I was very excited to see that we were making mango bread this week. I like spice breads so much that I upped the ginger to 2 teaspoons and the cinnamon to 1 1/2 teaspoons because I like my spice breads spicy. The dough was really stiff -- Dorie wasn't kidding when she wrote persevere. I was thinking that I'm definitely out of shape and I need to start pumping more iron because I had a doozie of a time getting that stiff dough together before I added the mangoes. I finally ended up kneeding it with my hands to get it to combine. The mangoes thinned it out quite a bit though and other than that it was a very easy bread to put together. Oh, I did need two large mangoes to get 2 cups of mango; however, I think that might be due to my very poor mango cutting skills. I can never seem to get all of the mango off of the pit. The only other issue that I had was that my bread exploded past the top of the loaf pan. I used the 8.5" x 4.5" size that Dorie recommends and maybe it's supposed to rise like this? But I think that next time I'll try it with a larger loaf pan anyway, just to see if it might make a better loaf.

Rapidly rising mango bread after 30 minutes in the oven.

I ended up tenting the bread after 30 minutes, but, as you can see, I still got some very dark (read: burned) corners on the bread. No matter, it's still delicious. I was quite apprehensive as I was slicing the bread because all of the mango hairs were sticking to my serrated knife and I was really ready to not like the bread. You know what, though? I loved it. It's nice and spicy but the pieces of mango offer a really great contrast to the spice. I'm the only person who's tasted it so far but I predict a home run. Thank you so much to Kelly, of Baking with the Boys, for choosing this delightful recipe. I loved it and I can't wait to try it with other stone fruit this summer. Are mangoes a stone fruit? They have a pit. Oh well, at any rate, I'm eager to try this with peaches, plums, and maybe even cherries.