Two mangoes are all that are left from the 15 purchased late last week. They were already turning pretty soft so it was time for them to be eaten and quickly too. After eating the fresh fruit for a couple of days no one was interested in that. Perhaps it would work better to disguise the fruit with other items. Tropical Smoothies did the trick.

Tropical Mango Smoothies

2 mangoes, fruit removed, diced and frozen

1 can of pineapple chunks (including juice), also frozen

1 cup of milk

1 cup of greek yogurt

1/2 can of coconut milk

juice of 1 lime

Add the milk, coconut milk, yogurt and lime juice to the blender. Give it a quick whizz around to blend it. Add in the frozen fruit pieces. Blend until the mixture has thickened and becomes smooth. I ended up adding in more coconut milk because it got a bit too thick at one point. You could always allow the fruit to partially thaw before blending to avoid this problem.

Pour into cups and enjoy!

I haven’t tried it yet but I bet this would make great homemade popsicles. Just a thought

I’m contributing this post to the Two For Tuesdays  Blog Hop over at A Moderate Life

At the end of the first day of trying to make peach mango butter I had about 1/2 a crockpot full of fruit.

The crockpot was covered and set to low. After about 4 hours of cooking the fruit was nice and soft. I pulled out my handy stick blender and pureed the fruit. The next step is to thicken up the puree by removing water from the mixture. To do this put a butter knife or a wooden spoon across one edge of the crockpot. When the cover is on the lid will be held open slighly so the water can escape. The length of time needed to thicken up the fruit will vary with the type and amount of fruit used. 

Stir the puree every hour or so to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the crock. As time goes on the level of fruit will drop as the fruit gets thicker. You can test how the fruit butter will set up by putting a small amount on a teaspoon. Allow it to cool. If it is still pretty thin in texture continue to cook it another hour and retest it. By the time this batch had became thick enough it looked like this:

The level of fruit had gone down about 1 to 1 1/2 inches. Here’s a close up to show you how much water had evaporated from the fruit.

The next step is to taste the fruit butter. You can adjust the sweetness by adding the sweetener of your choice. I only added about 1/3 cup of sugar. That amount made it sweet enough to but put on toast or peanut butter but not so sweet that it over powered the fruit flavor.

Follow canning instructions and processing times for your particular elevation. 5 peaches and 7 mangoes turned into 6 jars of peach mango butter.

I’m glad the fruit butter worked out well because one of the local farms just called me a short time ago. Seems they had a case of peach drops (over ripe, slightly bruised or not so pretty peaches) that I could have for $15. Can’t say no to a price like that.

Looks like it’s time for another batch of peach butter!

I’m joining the Canning Week Linky Party. Click the button below and join in:

Since my kids have now discovered their love for mangoes (thanks again Shakira!) I can finally make some exotic flavored jam or fruit butter. So far they usually only eat apple butter, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and peach jam. With my current abundance of mangoes and some fresh peaches from the farmers market it’s time to make a test batch of peach mango butter. Hopefully it will get thick enough to be a butter. If not then at least I will have several jars worth of jam.

Hopefully the same method used for making apple butter in the crockpot will work for this peach mango butter. If you’ve never made crockpot apple butter check out this site for some great directions.

* Start heating a pan of water. You will need the boiling water to help remove the skin from the peaches.

* While the water is coming to a boil cut the mangoes and remove the fruit. Place the diced mango into the crockpot.

* When the water in your pan comes to a boil carefully drop several peaches into the pot.

* Prepare a container filled with cold water and ice cubes. Once the peaches have been in the boiling water for 1 minutes transfer them to the other container. Wait 1 minute for the peaches to be cool enough to handle. The skins should be easy to remove from the peaches.

Carefully cut the peach in half and remove the pit. Dice the peaches and add the fruit to the crockpot. Set the crockpot to low. The first step in making fruit butter is to cook the fruit until it’s soft enough to mash or puree. I’ve never made fruit butter with anything except apples. The apples needed to cook overnight on low to make them nice and soft. I will be checking the peach/mango mixture every hour because they are already very soft. It probably won’t take as long.

Check back for part 2 of making peach mango butter. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will work and I’ll get some incredible tasting fruit butter without having to use lots of sugar.

Have you had success making fruit butter from something other then apples or peaches? If so I’d love to hear about which fruits you used.

This post was submitted to the following blogs:

 Fight Back Fridays at the Food Renegade blog 

 Monday Mania over at Healthy Home Economist

 Two For Tuesdays  blog hop over at A Moderate Life

 Stop by and check out all the other real food related posts.

Shakira Loves

Celebrities are good for more then music and entertainment. Sometimes they also get you to try a new fruit.  In Shakira’s case it was mangoes.

I do my best to introduce new things to my kids. Sometimes it works and at least one will eat the item. Usually it’s the oldest. So imagine how surprised I was to have my 8 year old daughter Rachel began asking me to buy mangoes.

Did she try one at a friends house? No. Did she try one at school? No. Perhaps her grandmother had given her a mango flavored dessert and she wanted to try the fruit? No. Turns out she wants to have a mango because Shakira, who is now Rachel’s most favorite singer, LOVES mangoes with a little sprinkle of salt. Or at least that’s what one fan site claims. So if Shakira loves mangoes then it most certainly must be worth trying right?

The next time I went shopping I brought home two mangos so everyone could try them. Amazingly everyone liked them! Fresh mangos are quite good even though they are a bit of a pain to cut. With a taste that seems to be a blend of peaches and oranges it’s well worth it though. If you’ve never cut a mango here’s a few links to help you out:

* How to cut a mango including step by step pictures

* How to choose a mango with tips on selecting, ripening and storing them

Thanks Shakira for getting my kids to try a new fruit. Glad you love mangoes and not some highly processed treat.

For those who may be reading this post via RSS feed please click through to this post to see a YouTube video of Shakira’s song Waka Waka…..currently my daughter’s favorite video!