mix, mix…stir, stir

Participating in a group and keeping an open mind will no doubt lead to new experiences. The recipe for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie baking group expanded my world to include mango bread. I had never heard of mango bread and couldn’t really imagine what it would be like.  Well, it’s not so different from banana bread, but with the exotic twist of mango.

When I read Dorie’s comment in the recipe head note about having a neighbor with a mango tree, I thought, “People have mango trees?” Living in the Northwest, the idea of having a mango tree is a completely foreign concept, but enviable.

Fresh pieces of mango stud the bread like juicy sweet gems of flavor, and the nicely spiced batter  gives the mango an appropriate background on which to shine. In addition to a hefty dose of ground ginger and cinnamon, brown sugar adds a warm caramel note tying the flavors together perfectly. The only thing I added was a little extra salt; a quarter teaspoon just seemed like too little to me with such strong spices in play.

My decision to boost the salt comes from baking a lot and knowing what I like – experience. This same experience came into play when I poured the batter in the specified loaf pan, but somehow it was as though I was watching someone cook on TV. My thought was “whoa, this pan is way too full. It’s going to spill all over the oven.” I observed this thought, yet did nothing about it. I have a larger loaf pan, but for some strange reason I was on recipe auto-pilot and just headed for the oven knowing this was going to make a mess.

Not long into the baking process the first glop of batter hit the oven floor. This began a cycle of scooping up dollops of batter off the oven floor about every 5-10 minutes throughout the baking time. It’s a wonder the bread got cooked with the oven door being opened so frequently. The lesson I learned is to pay attention to my experience and put it into action when a recipe seems to be off base. Interestingly, not everyone in the baking group had this problem, so it’s not that this is a poorly written recipe or the pan size listed is a typo. It’s just a good reminder to go with what you know, and I know that a loaf pan filled nearly to the top with batter will overflow in the oven.  

Despite the overflowing batter issue, this bread is addictively fantastic! To me it’s unique and interesting because I don’t have a mango tree growing in my yard.  If you visit Kelly’s blog, Baking with the Boys, you can make yourself a loaf and see how tasty it is. If you pick up Dorie’s book you’ll have hundreds of delicious treats to make.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 74 recipes completed 147 to go!