If my 15 year younger self would see me know. I am sitting here writing a text that praises a warm fruit salad. Young David would have told me that I was an idiot: “Why heat fruit when you can have it cold?!” You see, young David wasn’t very fond of warm fruit. At all. Back then, I could binge eat bowls of fresh fruit, but cook or bake it and I wouldn’t touch it. Even apple pie, the one dish that every normal person loves, made my stomach turn upside down. I sometimes allowed myself to eat the part of the crust that hadn’t been touched by the fruit, but my tongue cringed from the bare thought of warm apple in my mouth.
And now I’m all of a sudden ridiculously excited about this fruit salad that has taken a quick tour through a hot oven. What happened? I would love to say that this recipe was the game changer. But truth be told, I think I just slowly learned to appreciate warm fruit, recipe by recipe.
Apart from the fact that I used to hate warm fruit and now swear by this dessert. Apart from the fact that this recipe is dead-simple and can be prepared in no-time. And apart from the fact that it includes some of the best bounty of the season and you will get all these summer-bonanza-feelings just by preparing it. Yes, apart from all that, this fruit salad is also covered in grated dark chocolate (that melts!), coconut flakes and salted almonds (that pairs oh so well with dark chocolate). Young David might not approve, but old David thinks this is pretty darn good and would like you all to give it a try.
If you are still not convinced, we created this video for our youtube channel as a final selling point:
The original Swedish version of this dessert is called Gino. It’s baked strawberries, kiwis and bananas with white chocolate on top. Our version is quite different, but the choice of fruit and measurements are really just suggestions here, add or subtract fruit to your liking. Peaches or pineapple would also be good baked. Or raspberries. We have used fruit in season, but baking fruit is also a great way to increase the flavours during the winter season.
Luise and I haven’t entirely agreed on the baking time. Personally I think the fruit only should be heated quickly, so it’s still quite firm. Just 5-6 minutes or enough time for the chocolate to melt. Luise however prefers the fruit to be more baked and a bit softer so the juices and flavours come together more. That’s about 10-12 minutes. But we’ll leave that decision to you (in the photos and video it’s baked after Luise’s preference).
Warm Summer Fruit Salad with Dark Chocolate & Salted Almonds
Serves 4
1 cup almonds + 1 tbsp boiled water mixed with 1 tsp salt (or store-bought salted almonds)
3 kiwi fruits
3 apricots
2 bananas, peel
10 strawberries
10 cherries, pitted
2 plums, remove stones
1 lime, juice
1 oz / 30 g dark chocolate (70% or darker)
1/3 cup dried unsweetened coconut flakes
Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F.
Prepare the almonds by placing them in a mixing bowl, pour the hot salted water over the almonds and combine until all almonds are covered. Place the almonds in a baking tray and roast in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until slightly golden and crunchy. Set aside.
Prepare the fruit by cutting them into bitesize pieces. Place the fruit in a baking dish and add the lime juice, toss to mix.
Chop the almonds and sprinkle over the fruit salad. Grate the chocolate until it covers the fruit. Sprinkle with coconut flakes and place the dish in the oven.
Bake for 5-10 minutes, until the chocolate has melted and the fruit is warm and juicy (not mushy).
Serve in bowls with a dollop thick plain yogurt or ice cream.
“Each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen – these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places….But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it’s only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my ideas and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other.” ~John Green, Paper Towns
