Ideas For Fruit Salad – Festive Holiday Fruit Salad

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 fruit salad dressing, 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 fresh fruit! 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 lime juice or lemon juice. The orange juice 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 fresh fruit salad with pomegranate seeds or fresh mint leaves for a festive touch!
• 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 fresh fruit salad. I wouldn’t recommend using frozen fruit.
• Another idea is to transform this into a summer fruit salad, by using cantaloupe, a blueberry punnet, strawberry slices, or juicy watermelon.
• 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:
  • Banana Pudding
  • Lemon Meringue Pie
  • Orange Meringue Pie
  • Coffee Cream Pie
  • Ghost Meringue Cookies Recipe
  • Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies AKA Cloud Cookies

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

Holiday Popcorn Crunch

Sugared Cranberries (3 Ingredients Only)