For my go to fruit salad

Start with the acid to prevent fruits from blackening. In a large bowl add fresh orange juice, and pineapple juice. Add the raw honey and vanilla essence and mix well to incorporate. Slice your fruits in your preferred shapes then add those fruits to the juice in the bowl. Add the coconuts, cinnamon powder, sliced almonds and fold to properly mix and coat all ingredients. Serve in a jar, bowl or mini dessert cups…etc.

If you are serving this straight away, then you can place 1 edible flower in each cup/jar. I love how the edible flowers add to the whole natural, beautiful, colourful look and feel of fruit salads. Otherwise you can top up with whipped cream studded with pomegranate seeds, especially popular with the young 🙂

How to orchestrate the best fruit salads

• The first and most important element to a fabulous fruit salad starts with picking seasonal produce. Fruits never taste better than when they are in season. There is nothing worse than a fruit salad with fruits that are picked early and so lack on flavour, or are too sour still to be enjoyed.
• Go fresh, never frozen. Believe it or not, I have had fruit salads in good restaurants and cafes that used frozen fruits!! How is that even possible?! Freezing fruits changes their texture. Once thawed these fruits will be soggy and very texturally wrong for a fruit Salad! Always use good quality, unbruised, fresh fruits.
• Think of the flavours before deciding which fruits to go for. If you wish to use all fruits you have left before they go bad, that’s fine provided you decide quantities of each fruit according to the strength of the flavour. For example, mangoes are very pungent. If you use 6 mangoes, and 1 piece of other fruits, the mango flavour will take over the other flavours in the salad. That becomes a Mango Salad.
• Add aromatics. Yes you can use spices like cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, herbs like mint, rosemary, basil, ginger and even zaatar! Trust me, I do and it’s marvelous… you won’t believe how much depth these add to a fruit salad. They transform it from bland to super tasty. Sometimes 1 fruit, 1 herb and 1 juice can make a super delicious fruit salad. Like watermelon and mint/ basil salad. Also strawberries and rosemary salad…
• Add toasted or raw nuts to fruit Salads, I always add nuts to my fruit salads. I like the texture and flavour these nuts add to the plate. Just make sure to never use those salted cocktail nuts!
• When chopping the fruits, try and make them uniform in size, it appeals better to the eye, and is then easier to spoon more combinations of fruit for each bite. If you chop your salad overly large it will be hard to grab more than one piece of fruit for any bite. Go for a medium size chop, it is always a better option than the larger sizes. You can even go super mini batonnet for a salsa effect. I use the mini batonnets when making a fruit salad to accompany a cake like in my spiced apple cake. It recreates the food topped with salsa cuisine experience, which is another interesting way to serve fruit salads. Think fruit salsas to accompany, pancakes, crepes, shortbread, financiers, molten…etc. and also don’t forget some savoury foods benefit from fruit salsas. Think game meat for instance.
• You don’t always have to serve fruit salad in bowls, you can also serve them in cups, shot glasses with mini spoons, jars for lunchboxes or an outdoor BBQ or picnics…etc. This all adds to the appeal of food, which makes it more desirable. Just because it is a fruit salad, it does not have to be boring!
• Add edible flowers to your fruit salads. I love to use edible flowers, because they add an aesthetic element that is so elegant and inviting. They add colour, but most importantly they add flavour. Yes edible flowers are not used to only add colour, those petals are packed with flavour, some flowers more than others as in all things.
• Add flavourings whenever suitable with the flavours you are going for. Like a good quality vanilla essence (not the cheap medicinal supermarket ones, for instance the quality coming from good vanilla plantations) you will be amazed how good these taste in a fruit salad. You can also use rose water, orange blossom water, distilled cardamom water…etc.
• Go for different juices as base instead of the same old orange juice all the time. Try a mixture of pineapple juice and coconut juice for a tropical feel. Go for home-made lemonade and finely chopped mint for a refreshing feel on super hot days. Try apple juice for when you are craving sweets…etc. Also don’t forget the wines and champagnes. Well only for those celebration days!