Name: Plant-Based Coconut Mango Tropical Fruit Crumble
Total time: 50 min
Ingredients: 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); 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

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Plant-Based Coconut Mango Tropical Fruit Crumble - Oil-Free Healthy Dessert Recipe from Plants-Rule — Plant-Based Coconut Mango Tropical Fruit Crumble – Oil-Free Healthy Dessert Recipe from Plants-Rule

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!

Mangoes in Costa Rica Farmer's Market — Mangoes are ripe when they are soft to the touch, kind of like avocados.

How to Build a Basic Fruit Crumble:

A basic fruit crumble has two main components:

Sweet fruit filling
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.

Peach, Plum, Blueberry Crisp – Healthy, Plant-Based, Gluten-Free, No Sugar Added, Oil-Free Vegan Summer Dessert Recipe

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 jui ciest 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.

Coconut Mango Chia Pudding Parfait - Healthy, Plant-Based, Gluten-Free, No Refined Sugar or Syrup Vegan Snack Recipe from Plants-Rule — Use fresh or frozen mango for this easy, healthy, plant-based recipe

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

Gluten-Free Apple Crumble - Healthy, Oil-Free, No Sugar Added, Plant-Based, Vegan Dessert Recipe from Plants-Rule — Gluten-Free Apple Crumble – Healthy, Oil-Free, No Sugar Added, Plant-Based, Vegan Dessert Recipe from Plants-Rule

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.