Fruit Salad ~ Beat the Heat !

When we moved from the freezing Salt Lake City to the oven roasted city of Phoenix, my friends(Pallavi and Gowri) here, had just one tip to share - stay cool. Esp. for us, since it was snowing while we left SLC and in an hour and half we were into this hot land. People say its the best weather here but oh boy, for us its super hot. I don't even wanna guess what we would go through during summer here.

Well, as per the tips shared we have been making a conscious attempt to keep ourselves cool and have been religiously feeding ourselves with fruit salads, shakes and vegetable salads - yeah, I know its kind of very unusual for pure non vegetarians like us. But I am loving it :) .

While one such fruit salad preparation was on, I was so fascinated with the different colours of the fruits, that I chose to write this post on it.

Anyone from Pala (Kerala) here? If yes, I am sure, with the fruit salad you could easily associate with Trupthi Ice cream parlor. As kids, during our vacation time in Kerala, every time we would go shopping in Pala town, a visit to Trupthi was a must. The fruit salad, pudding, ice cream, cold coffee...hmm well let me stop myself there. Lets get down and focus on our fruit salad for now :).

Ingredients

1. 2 1/2 cups of milk
2. Sugar as per taste
3. 2 1/2 tbsp of custard powder
4. 1/8 tsp of vanilla essence
5. Wide variety of fruits 
6. 2 tbsp of simple sugar syrup

Method

• In a saucepan, boil 2 cups of milk with sugar in it (I used 3 tbsps of sugar).
• In a bowl, add the remaining milk and custard and stir it with a spoon so that the custard gets incorporated well. Drop it into the boiled milk while its still hot and cook it on medium heat while you stir it constantly. The mixture would get thick.
• Remove it from the heat and place the saucepan in a large vessel with cold water. Keep stirring till the mixture cools down. 
• Transfer it into another container and refrigerate it. The custard would again thicken after refrigerated.
• Wash all the fruits thoroughly and cut it into cubes. Add simple sugar syrup into it. I used 2 tbsps of the syrup. Give it a toss.
• Place it in the fridge. 
• While its time to serve, scoop out fruits as needed into a bowl and drop in the custard as required. Serve it chill.

Tips

1. You could choose to add an egg while making the custard. Beat the egg well and add it with the custard powder mix and cook it thoroughly.
2. Its essential to keep the custard and the fruits separate while you refrigerate it else if kept together, the water from the fruits would make the custard watery.
3. Use a sharp knife to cut the fruits esp. oranges and grapes to let them remain in shape and retain its juice.
4. Its better if you use the custard powder with pineapple/vanilla flavour. Our store didn't carry those and had no choice but to go with the Banana flavour and hence the green color of the custard :).