Tropical Crumble

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Gaye of Laws of the Kitchen. She chose the Tropical Crumble, which is banana/mango/ginger crisp. The thought behind this recipe is that foods that grow together should taste good together. Seems pretty logical to me! You can get the recipe for this crumble on Gaye’s blog and check out the Tuesdays with Dorie site to see all the twists and turns of this recipe created by other bakers.

I was excited when I read that this recipe was selected, because I love apple crisp and I figured it would be excellent with tropical flavors. I read the recipe and realized that it contained bananas, which I don’t like. Following the “things that grow together” idea, I decided to substitute pineapple for the bananas. Pineapple and mango grow together and pineapple seems very tropical to me. I knew that the texture would be different and it would be a bit sweeter, but this is dessert, so that’s ok!

This smelled divine when the mango and pineapple were caramelizing with the brown sugar and butter! The pineapple maintained its firm texture but the mango softens and sort of becomes the “sauce” of the crisp. (This was probably helped by the fact that I don’t know how to cut a mango and they got a little man-handled in my attempt to cut them.) The crumble topping baked up nicely, but the pineapple had more liquid so the crumble didn’t get as crispy as it could have. It was really tasty, with the ginger flavor coming through very cleanly. I really enjoyed this crumble, and I loved what the pineapple added to this recipe.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 418-419.