Cantaloupe Crunch recipe
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Steve Edwards
Ken Finley and Yelena Miller enjoy taste testing cups of cantaloupe crunch in front of Finley's fruit stand in downtown Chinook. Yelena, and her siblings, were selling homemade raspberry freezer jam alongside Finley's pickup loaded with fresh produce from his truck garden. Finley raises and sells lots of cantaloupes each summer.
This is the first time I've written about a recipe, and it could very well be the last. I'm not a big fan of cooking and when I have to fend for myself it's the basic stuff and, often, not very well put together. Fortunately, my wife is a great cook and she made the following recipe. Not only did it taste good but the dish used a main ingredient that I don't ever recall seeing as part of a baked item--cantaloupe.
Cantaloupes have been a commercial crop in North America since around 1890. Believed to have originated in a region from Iran and India to Africa, it was introduced in Europe and then to other areas with a warm growing season. Made up of 90% water, cantaloupe is still a good source of vitamin C and A. About 32 million tons of cantaloupe are consumed every year around the world.
When my wife found she had a couple of cantaloupes that were getting too ripe and 'headed south,' she did an internet search and came up with a recipe that used cantaloupe. She said because the cantaloupe she used was very ripe, and therefore had a lot of liquid in it, she added a tablespoon of flour to help thicken the mixture to be baked. We felt like the finished product tasted like other fruit crunch dishes-much like peach crunch, especially. Still, it had a bit of the cantaloupe flavor and we thought some readers might enjoy it. Here's the recipe for cantaloupe crunch.
Ingredients
3 cups cubed cantaloupe
1/3 cup lemon juice
½ cup white sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons butter, melted
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 (18.25 ounce) package white cake mix
½ cup butter, melted
Directions
1.Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 C).
2.In a medium bowl, mix together the cantaloupe, lemon juice, sugar, flour, 2 tablespoons melted butter, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Transfer to a 9-inch square baking dish and spread the dry cake mix evenly over the top. Drizzle the remaining melted butter over the cake mix.
3.Bake for 45 minutes in the preheated oven or until the top is golden brown.
