Ideas For Fruit Salad – Festive Holiday Fruit Salad
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If you’re searching for festive ideas for fruit salad, you need this holiday fruit salad in your life! Featuring a variety of fruit in a creamy custard-like sauce, this fruit salad is one of my favorite treats… ever!
When it comes to ideas for fruit salad, I’ll always instantly turn to and recommend my Grandmama’s holiday fruit salad recipe. It’s my absolute favorite thing in the entire world to eat. I adore it. I love it. As my son said once, “This is so good. If it were a girl, I’d marry it!”. Yep, it’s THAT good.
So, what makes this refreshing fruit salad recipe so irresistible? Well, it includes lots of different fresh fruit, like apples, oranges, and grapes, plus multiple cans of fruit cocktail. Then instead of a , you drain the fruit juice and make a deliciously creamy and custard-like sauce with the juice, sugar, and egg yolks. Let the fruit salad sit in the fridge overnight so the fruit can soak up all that creamy goodness and you have yourself the perfect winter fruit salad.
This is a great dessert dish to take to festive potlucks and gatherings with friends and family. No one will be able to resist!
Recipe Ingredients
- Apples
- Oranges
- Seedless grapes
- 3-4 cans fruit cocktail (with juice)
- 1 cup sugar
- 6 egg yolks
Let’s first start with the ! Peel and chop apples. Place in a bowl.
Peel and cut up oranges. Cut oranges up over apples and stir so that the orange juice prevents them from browning.
Yep, no need for or . The does the job!
Cut grapes into halves. Place in the bowl.
Pour all of the fruit cocktail cans into the bowl, juice and all.
Stir well.
Drain the juice from the bowl of fruit into a saucepot.
Add sugar.
You CAN use Splenda in place of sugar here!
Separate eggs.
You can discard the whites or find another use for them. I’ve included some ideas in the notes section of the recipe card at the bottom of this post.
Beat egg yolks well.
Add to the saucepot. Stir well.
Cook for approximately 15 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened.
Cool.
Pour over fruit. Stir, cover, and refrigerate.
Make at least 24 hours ahead so that flavors can marry.
Or they can just date for a bit. They’ll likely get along better if they haven’t signed on for a commitment after such a short time anyway!
Serve cold.
If you had any idea how wonderful this tastes you’d be dying right now!
Grandmama and Mama always store theirs in glass jars in the fridge, kind of like this one.
Storage
Leftovers will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a week. I don’t recommend freezing leftover fruit salad.
Recipe Notes
- When it comes to topping ideas for fruit salad, I recommend coconut and/or pecans. You could also garnish the with or
- If you’d like to add more fresh fruit, you can add bananas to this fruit salad recipe. However, they turn dark quickly and the fruit salad will not last as long in the refrigerator.
- This is a . I wouldn’t recommend using .
- Another idea is to transform this into a , by using .
- Instead of fruit cocktail, you could use a variety of canned tropical fruit, like crushed pineapple, peach slices, or maraschino cherries.
- This is the perfect time to save those egg whites for the meringue on top of a pie or banana pudding! Here are my favorite dessert recipes using meringue:
Here are more fabulously festive recipes to make these holidays:
Southern Plate’s Must Make Christmas Cookies
Christmas Candies (On A Budget & In A Hurry)
Christmas Tie-Dyed Cheesecake Brownies
Sugared Cranberries (3 Ingredients Only)
Ingredients
- 6-8 apples
- 6 oranges
- 1 lb seedless grapes
- 3-4 cans fruit cocktail 15-ounce cans. You can use generic, it is every bit as good!
- 1 cup sugar
- 6 egg yolks*
Instructions
- Peel the fruit and chop them into small pieces. Cut the oranges over the apples so that the juice from the oranges will stop the apples from turning dark. Pour fruit cocktail cans over the fruit.6-8 apples, 6 oranges, 1 lb seedless grapes, 3-4 cans fruit cocktail
- Drain the juice from the fruit into a saucepan. Add 1 cup of sugar and 6 egg yolks. Blend well.1 cup sugar, 6 egg yolks*
- Cook for approximately 15 minutes over medium heat stirring occasionally until slightly thickened. Cool. Pour over fruit.
- Stir, cover, and refrigerate. Will keep in the fridge for a week. Make at least 24 hours ahead so that flavors can marry.
- Optional: coconut and pecans. Bananas can be added but they turn dark quickly and the fruit salad will not last as long in the refrigerator.
Notes
Banana Pudding
Lemon Meringue Pie
Orange Meringue Pie
Coffee Cream Pie
Nutrition
I want to try this SOOOOO bad, but I am allergic to pineapple. I’ve never found canned fruit cocktail that didn’t have it in it. I’m soooo sad! :*((
Why don’t you just leave it out? This recipe is easily adaptable.
Do you add any flavoring like vanilla or lemon to the sauce?
Just made this, was watching the egg mixture and stirring religiously, a beautiful yellow Then I got distracted by something on tv, oh no, now it’s a light brown and I stirred up some brown pieces. Tasted ok so I used it, am still serving it tomorrow for thanksgiving. They don’t know what color it’s supposed to be, so we’ll see.
My mother would use apples and bananas and mini marshmallows with the sauce. instead of the fruit cocktail she would use lemon juice. she has been gone almost 20 years and i never wrote the recipe down. i found something similar a few years ago and then lost that one too. i have been looking for hours now and this is the closest i have come to finding it. Thank you so much! she would make it for me every Thanksgiving and Christmas and i just loved it. i would eat it for days till it was all gone! i am going to try to make it tonight! thank you so much for posting this.
Have you tried this as a low carb option with berries instead of the fruit above and an alternative sugar?
I personally have not but see no reason why it wouldn’t work beautifully. We have made it with Splenda before and it was wonderful. Splenda, of course, has much fewer carbs than sugar but still has some. I don’t use Stevia but if you do you could certainly try it. I think it will be great!
My mother and aunt made fruit salad for the holidays. They didn’t use the syrup to make a custard. They discarded the syrup and no sugar was added…..except for shredded coconut. They used mandarin oranges in the can rather than regular navel oranges. And tosses in pecans. Oh, sliced bananas too. Then they would fold in lots of cool whip. Like you, I could eat this all the time. It just gets better and better the longer it stays in the fridge.
Your version sounds delicious as well!!!
Christy this reminds me of a fruit salad my mother-in-law made over 30 years ago. If I remember she used frozen fruit instead of can fruit cocktail with fresh fruit. How much frozen fruit would you use and could you use pineapple and bananas as well?