Honey Mango Banana Bread

I make a lot of Indian food (in case no one had noticed that) and one of the products I have in my pantry at all times, for no particular reason, is mango pulp. It comes in large cans and it is, well, mango pulp.

I love mangos but you don't get good mangos here in the US (unless you're fortunate enough to live in Hawaii). Even so, I can only eat one raw mango because my lips blister if the juices touch my skin. So there I go, whenever I can manage to get a ripe-ish mango, carefully peeling it and cutting it into small chunks and ever so carefully edging it past my lips without brushing the skin . . . YUM!

If I eat 2, the inside of my mouth gets a bit raw, but one is safe. I don't know what causes it, but cooked mango products don't cause the problem.

So there's the mango pulp. I buy it all the time but I almost never actually use it because I don't know HOW. It wasn't something my ex's family used, so I've never really figured out what to do with it, other than make Mango Lassi (a drink with yogurt) which I don't really care for. My son used to eat it right out of the can with a spoon. Pretty sure that's not the intended use for it either. I keep hoping to figure out something useful to do with it because I absolutely LOVE mangos. So far I haven't really come up with very many uses for it.

In an attempt to incorporate some of this yummy ingredient into my repertoire, I came up with the following modification of a standard banana bread recipe (from the King Arthur website). It makes a very moist, flavorful quick bread. There's just a hint of the mango - in future I'd like to try incorporating some ripe mango chunks into the bread for a stronger mango flavor, but lacking ripe (or at least ripe-ish) mangos, this isn't a bad effort.

• 8 T (one stick) butter
• 2/3 c brown sugar
• 1/4 c honey
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 T cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 12 oz mashed overripe bananas
• 1/4 c mango puree
• 2 large eggs
• 10 oz by weight flour

I used King Arthur All Purpose flour, which is about the same as anybody else's bread flour at 11.6% protein.

1. Cream together butter, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Beat til it has a smooth consistency.
2. Add the remaining ingredients EXCEPT the flour and beat till smooth again. I do this in my Kitchenaid stand mixer with the wire whip.
3. Replace the wire whip with the beater blade and beat in the flour, stirring just to mix. You want a smooth mixture but don't over beat it or it will be heavy and dense.
4. Grease a 9x5 loaf pan and pour the batter in. Smooth the top so it's more or less even-ish.
5. Bake in a 350 F oven for 45 mins, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cover the top with foil towards the end if the top is browning too fast.
6. Let cool, slice and serve.