Plant-Based Coconut Mango Tropical Fruit Crumble

Sweet banana, mango, and coconut come together for this delicious plant-based tropical fruit crumble.  With a gluten-free, vegan topping made from macadamia nuts.  This dessert is a tropical delight!

How to Build a Basic Fruit Crumble:

A basic fruit crumble has two main components:

1. Sweet fruit filling
2. Crunchy, crumble topping

The sweet fruit filling can include all sorts of season, fresh, or frozen fruits.  Stone fruits like peaches and plums work great.  Yet, you can also use diced apples, pears, or chunks of pineapple.  For bursts of juicy flavor, add berries like blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, or even gooseberries.

A traditional fruit crumble topping includes flour, sugar, butter, and a dash of salt.  In the culinary world, this is what we call a Pate Sucre, or a short crust dough.  It’s short because it requires a short cooking time.  The dough doesn’t require any time to rest or rise, unlike bread dough.

How to Bake a Plant-Based, Oil-Free Vegan Fruit Crisp:

Step One: Make a Whole Foods, Plant-Based Fruit Filling

Adapting traditional fruit crisps for a plant-based, oil-free vegan diet is quite easy.  For the fruit filling, you first need to cut out any refined sugar or syrups.  Instead, find the sweetness from fresh or dried fruits.  You can do this by relying a few key plant-based tips:

• Think Seasonal: Fruit is at its juiciest and sweetest when it’s in season.  Think about how delicious peaches are in the middle of summer.  Conversely, think of how rock-hard they can be in the winter.
• Use Frozen: If you can’t find or afford season fruit, frozen is your next-best option.  Frozen fruit is picked at the height of the season and then frozen as quickly as possible.  This locks in the flavor year-round.
  • Chef’s Tip:  Walk into the freezer of many restaurants, and you’ll see fruit that chefs have frozen when it was in-season.  Most pastry chefs will use this supply to make cakes, ice creams, and other confections even when the season is over.
• Think Tropical: Tropical fruits are naturally sweeter.  Think about bananas, pineapple, and mangos.  These fruits naturally have less water and more natural sugar than some of their temperate-climate friends.
• Add Dried:  Dried fruit has all of the moisture removed.  In turn, this intensifies the fruit flavor and natural sugars in the fruit.  Dried dates, cherries, mango, and pineapple are some of my favorites to add to fruit crisps.  Just be sure to chop the dried fruit into small pieces so that it combines well with the other fruit filling ingredients.

Step Two: Make a Whole Foods, Plant-Based Crumble Topping

For a gluten-free crumble topping of a fruit crisp, you need three main components: flour, sugar, and fat.  Instead of traditional white flour and butter, you’ll use plant-based ingredients.

Brown rice flour or oat flour are my favorite go-to ingredients for a crumble topping.  Unlike traditional wheat flour, these gluten-free flours won’t get chewy.  Therefore, you don’t have to worry about over-mixing.  Brown rice flour tends to have a more neutral flavor and crumbly texture.  Yet, oat flour adds a subtle nutty flavor and smoother texture.  You can even do a combination of the two!

Instead of sugar, I like using dried fruit. Chopped dates are an easy, whole foods swap for granulated sugar. However, its fun to play with other fruits. For this tropical crumble, I went with a tropical fruit (dried mango). Because these dried fruits are granulated like sugar, you’ll need to chop them really well. A food processor works great for this.

For the fat component of a crumble topping, chopped nuts or nut butter are going to be your best options.  Cashews, macadamia, and coconut are some of the richest nuts, giving you the richest flavor.  However, I also love using pecans and walnuts for color and flavor.  If you have a nut allergy, you can stick with coconut.  Or, try using sunflower seeds or hemp seeds.

What’s the Difference Between a Crumble, a Crisp, and a Cobbler?

While these three names are often used interchangeably, there are some distinctions.  All three have stewed or baked fruit as the base.  However, the differences come with the different ways to top that fruit.

Britain created the fruit crumble. This combines stewed fruit with a pastry topping, traditionally made from butter and flour.  In the United States, oats were added to the topping and a crisp was created.  In the southern part of the United States, the topping became thicker and more doughy.  Thus, a cobbler was created. 

The three main differences between these fruit desserts are:

• Fruit Crumble: A fruit filling is topped with a thin, crumbled layer of pastry
• Fruit Crisp: A fruit filling is topped with a thin crisp layer that includes oats
• Fruit Cobbler: A fruit filling is topped with a thick layer of biscuit dough

Chef Katie’s Plant-Based Baking Tips:

What is Brown Rice Flour: Brown Rice flour is made from ground brown rice.  It has a neutral flavor and grainy texture.  It is naturally gluten-free.  Besides baking, you can use it for gluten-free cooking, like in GRAVY.

Nut-Free: Substitute sunflower or hemp seeds for the macadamia nuts.

Baking Without Refined Sugar or Syrup: I’m on a mission to get rid of empty calories.  This recipe doesn’t use any refined sugar, maple syrup, or other refined sweetener. Mangos and bananas provide sweetness, along with healthy fiber and essential nutrients.

Make Extra Topping: Make extra of the Gluten-Free Oat Crisp topping and freeze it. With frozen peaches and frozen wild blueberries, you’ll be ready to make this dessert in no-time, any season of the year.

Endless Variations:  Use this recipe as a template for enjoying summer’s fruits.  You can swap out the blueberries for strawberries or blackberries. Or, make a Peach, Plum, Wild Blueberry Summer Oat Crisp.

Plant-Based Coconut Mango Tropical Fruit Crumble

Medium  |  Servings: 8  |  Ready In: 50 minutes

If you like this recipe, you’ll also enjoy: Peach, Plum, Wild Blueberry Summer Oat Crisp, Gluten-Free Cinnamon Apple Pecan Crumble, Coconut Mango Chia Pudding Parfait, and Strawberry Mango Chia Jam.

Check out more whole foods, plant-based Fruit Recipes: Cherries, Berries, Pineapple, Pears: 15 Easy and Creative Healthy Fruit Recipes.

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Plant-Based Coconut Mango Tropical Fruit Crumble

Sweet banana, mango, and coconut come together for this delicious plant-based tropical fruit crumble. With a gluten-free, vegan topping made from macadamia nuts. This dessert is a tropical delight!

Course Dessert

Cuisine Central American, Gluten-Free, Healthy, Latin American, Plant-Based, Vegan, Vegetarian

Keyword banana, coconut, date-sweetened, dried fruit, freezer-friendly, fruit, gluten-free, healthy, mango, no refined sugar, plant-based, tropical, wfpb, whole foods diet

Total Time 50 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Calories 283kcal

Ingredients

For the Gluten-Free Coconut Crumble Topping:

• ½ cup dried mango (about 80g) soaked in warm water 10 minutes, to soften
• ½ cup raw macadamia nuts
• 1/2 cup brown rice flour
• ½ cup coconut shredded
• Pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup water as needed

For the Plant-Based Tropical Mango Filling:

• 2 large mangoes diced (or about 3 cups frozen, thawed)
• 4 bananas sliced into bite-sized pieces
• 1 teaspoon lime juice
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ cup water or water from soaking the mangos
• Pinch of salt

Instructions

• Preheat your oven to 375F

To make the Gluten-Free Coconut Crumble Topping:

• Remove the mango from the soaking water, but save the water. In a food processor, combine the mango and macadamia nuts. Pulse until very well chopped, about 20-25 pulses. Add the brown rice flour, shredded coconut, and dash of salt. Add 2 tablespoons of the mango soaking water. Puree the mixture. It should start to come together into small, pea-sized clumps. Add more water, one tablespoon at a time, until you reach this texture.

To make the Plant-Based Tropical Mango Filling:

• In a medium bowl, combine all the filling ingredients. If you have water leftover from soaking the mangoes, add that. If not, add ¼ cup of regular tap water.
• To make and bake the Plant-Based Coconut Mango Tropical Fruit Crumbles:
• Pour the Plant-Based Tropical Mango Filling into an 8-inch pie pan. Sprinkle the Gluten-Free Coconut Crumble Topping evenly to cover. Place in the oven and bake 30-40 minutes, until golden brown on top and hot and bubbly around the edges.
• Let cool about 10 minutes before serving.

Notes

Servings: 8
Medium
Ready in: 50 minutes

Nutrition Facts

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