Not Your Mama’s Fruit Salad

Bonjour, mes beaux amis!!!

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, but I have a good reason: LIFE. Sometimes it totally gets in the way of stuff, and this was one of those times. I caught a nasty cold, had family come to town to visit, went out of town myself… yeah, it’s been a busy couple of months!

However, just like Spring, I’m back!

Last weekend, I was on my way out of town and realized that I had some fresh fruit in the fridge that would probably die soon if I didn’t eat it all. So what better way to enjoy fruit and be so happy for the spring season than with a fabulous fruit salad! We’re not talking the fruit salads of yesteryear, with mini-marshmallows and/or any bizarre combination of a gelatinous pudding or custard, or even worse, MIRACLE WHIP… sorry, not sorry and not a fan.

No, but rather, this little fruit salad I threw together is fresh, sweet and herbacious. And of course, like almost any dessert, a little homemade whip cream can make it even better. I think you will love it – ENJOY!

Ingredients:

1/2 lb fresh strawberries
3 ripe kiwis
8 oz fresh blueberries
2 cups frozen mango (I use frozen because why not, and fresh are a huge pain to cut up, amiright?!)
2 TB fresh chopped mint
2 TB fresh chopped thyme
2 TB fresh basil chiffonade
juice of 1 lemon

For homemade whip cream:

1 cup heavy whipping cream (keep cold or in fridge until right before you make the whip cream)
1 1/2 TB powdered sugar

Slice the strawberries and kiwis into pieces that are about the same size. I prefer to cut them about 1 1/2 ” x 1 1/2″ or so. Combine these in a bowl.
Add in the chopped mango pieces. *Sidenote: if the mango pieces are really big or much bigger than the strawberry/kiwi pieces, cut them down too. Just makes for more even bites and spoonfuls. 🙂
Chop the mint and destem the thyme leaves, and chiffonade the basil. Add these to the fruit mixture.
Juice one lemon (be careful not to let the seeds fall!) into the fruit mixture.
Toss all of the ingredients together to evenly distribute each ingredient.
For homemade whip cream, pour heavy cream into deep/tall bowl.
Add the powdered sugar to heavy cream.
With a hand mixer, stand mixer or by hand, whip the cream with whisk until stiff peaks form.
1. For a hand mixer or stand mixer, use your whisk attachment and whip for approximately 4 minutes. **Another sidenote: if your heavy cream is a bit old, it may take longer for it to whip.
2. If you decide to whip the heavy cream by hand, use a metal whisk to beat the cream non-stop until the peaks form. Depending on how hard/fast you whip the cream, this could take from 3 to 5 minutes and some sweat, not to mention a tired arm!
Add as little or as much whip cream as you want on top of your fruit salad. Because WHIP.CREAM.