Can You Make Fruit Salad The Night Before

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~ A beautifully layered Christmas Fruit Salad with festive stripes! This features vacation favorites like pomegranates, dried cranberries and pistachios, along with apples and grapes, plus a luscious dressing and crunchy topping. So much more than special than typical fruit salad recipes … yet information technology takes hardly any actress time at all (and can be prepped alee, too)! ~

This Recipe Is: • Ready in 30 Minutes or Less • Includes Make-Alee Steps • Vegetarian • Gluten Gratis (come across notation) •

Semi-side view of the finished Christmas Fruit Salad recipe, so you can see the colorful layers on the side, but also the stars on the top.

Creating vacation magic doesn't have to exist hard … or time-consuming. I don't know virtually you lot, but one matter I definitely don't accept is loads of extra time on my easily. Particularly at Christmas!

Still, I want to make everything feel actress-special however I tin can. A little more wonderful, a little more sparkly!

This fruit salad is a perfect example!

Why This Christmas Fruit Salad Is And so Magical

• First, it looks truly special, all layered up with festive stripes of colour.

• It also tastes truly special – a unique twist that's way more exciting that ordinary bowls of cutting-upwardly mixed fruit! Information technology'due south got a delicious combination of sweetness and tart, crunchy and chewy. Juicy grapes and well-baked apples, tangy dried cranberries and little pops of flavorful pomegranate.

Ingredients like whole apples, bunches of grapes, and bowls of cranberries, granola, pistachios, and pomegranate arils.

• All draped in a light, creamy dressing. Plus, a crunchy granola and pistachio topping. It's so, then delicious. Waaaaay across the usual fruit salads you find on holiday cafe tables!

• But it takes but a few minutes to make. Honestly, near the same amount of time you'd spend on plainly, ho-hum ol' cutting-up fruit salad.

• And, it tin can exist pretty much entirely prepped ahead, even the dark earlier (you know nosotros've got make-alee tips)! So you'll have plenty of time to help fix out Christmas cookies for Santa, and sprinkle "reindeer nutrient" on the yard, and maybe even get a couple hours of slumber (mayhap!).

How to Make Those Festive, Fruity Layers

Although this festive fruit basin looks so pretty, it'southward truly uncomplicated to make.

Pro Tip:

To actually get the full effect of the colorful fruit layers, information technology'south best to use a glass trifle dish (like this one I used) or a straight-sided glass bowl. In a pinch, though, any clear drinking glass basin will withal work ok, besides.

From at that place, to make your magical salad, start by mixing your fruit salad dressing, your light-green fruits, and your red fruits in iii split up bowls.

Overhead of prepped ingredients: one bowl of red fruit, one bowl of green fruit, one bowl of fruit salad dressing, plus bowls of pistachios and extra pomegranate arils and cranberries.

Green Layer:

Place a few of the Christmas-y dark-green fruits around the outside of your fruit bowl or trifle dish, confronting the drinking glass. I like to make certain the pieces of apple accept the green skin facing outwards, so you can see the light-green colour.

Then, you mix a piffling bit of the dressing into the remaining green fruit and spoon it into your serving basin, inside the ring of fruit you lot pressed against the drinking glass.

Collage of two photos (one from the side and one overhead) showing how to make the salad's green layer.

Extra-Fast Tip: If you're in a HUGE bustle, yous can skip the pace of placing a few green pieces of fruit along the outside of the bowl. I just similar to practice that and so that the colors are extra bright and festive, without having the white fruit salad dressing obscuring the fruit colors.

Red Layer:

Next, do the same affair for the red layer. Place some of those pretty, red fruits against the glass on the outside of the basin. Mix a niggling more than dressing into the remaining scarlet fruit and spoon that into the basin, on peak of the light-green layer.

Collage of two photos (one from the side and one overhead) showing how to make the red layer.

Toppings:

After that, you spread the remaining fruit salad dressing in an fifty-fifty layer on summit of the cherry fruit layer.

Push information technology well-nigh to the glass, merely don't force a lot of it correct confronting the edge, considering and then it tends to drip downwards a fiddling and obscure some of the red layer below it. A few artistic drips here and there are fine, though – don't captivate near it!

Quickly toss your crunchy granola and pistachios together, and sprinkle them all across the pearly white dressing. (Alternately, you tin can sprinkle each separately, preferably with the green pistachios on top.)

Collage of two overhead method photos, the first showing a hand just beginning to sprinkle pistachios and granola on the fruit salad, and the other showing the pomegranates on top of that.

Mound some of those glistening, jewel-toned pomegranate arils in the centre of your fruit salad, and sprinkle a few all across the top, too.

And so, for an extra flourish (because, I mean … we're really in the business of over-the-elevation, extra little flourishes with this fruit salad, aren't we??), superlative the whole gorgeous cosmos with some shiny, gilded stars.

Overhead closeup of three of the starfruit stars on top of the salad, with the trifle bowl sitting on the the cutting board and extra grapes nearby.

But don't worry – this office is easy, too! And we've got a couple of unlike ideas for you on how to exercise this.

How to Make Festive Stars (two Ways)

Method #i) The very easiest way to brand those stars is to grab a star fruit (aka carambola).

I take to requite a huge shoutout hither to our wonderful friends in Florida who gifted u.s.a. with some of their lovingly homegrown starfruit, which is nearly 1,000x more delicious than any I've ever bought in the grocery store. Their stunning fruit is the hero of today's recipe photos, for certain.

But, if you don't happen to have friends with a star fruit tree growing in their yard, and yous can't notice any star fruit at your local store … don't panic. Nosotros've got another idea!

Method #2) You can besides use a star-shaped cookie cutter (or channel your inner Michelangelo and costless-hand this with a sharp knife if you're feeling especially artistic).

Cut a flat plank from the side of a pineapple, and use your star cutter to brand some Christmas-y stars.

Collage of two photos, the first showing two ways of making the stars for the top of the fruit salad, and the second showing how the finished salad looks with pineapple stars.

You could similarly use a whitish-green honeydew melon, instead of pineapple (like nosotros practice in our recipe for DIY fruit bouquets and fruit kabobs). The stars won't exist gold, of form, but they'll even so be decked out in appropriately holiday-spirited colors.

Ingredient Tips

Apples

I recommend choosing Granny Smiths for your green apple. Their tart flavor is a nice counterpoint to some of the sweeter flavors in this fruit salad. And, they're 1 of the all-time apples for resisting browning after they've been cut, which is a bonus if you're prepping this salad ahead (more than on that in a minute).

For the scarlet apples, I recommend Honeycrisps – for their terrific crunchy-juicy texture, their wonderful flavor, and considering they're as well champs at resisting browning. The thing here, though, is that Honeycrisps come in broad ranges of colour variations, from generally reddish to by and large yellow.

To brand your red layer equally … well, every bit RED … equally possible, select apples with every bit much blood-red skin as yous can, instead of more yellow-y ones.

Pomegranates

You can oft purchase already-prepared pomegranate arils in trivial packaged cups in your grocery store's refrigerated produce section. That'll save you lot a couple of minutes of prep time.

Or, you tin can but whole pomegranates (which are less expensive and also keep longer before they become bad), and cut them yourself. If yous've never done this before, don't worry – it's easy! We walk yous through it in our postal service How to Open a Pomegranate. Afterward you've done it once, you'll exist a lifelong pro!

Pistachios

It'southward super important to grab lightly salted pistachios.

The "regular" salted ones are just too … salty. They don't sense of taste as good with this fruit salad.

Honestly, if you can't find lightly salted, I'd recommend using completely unsalted instead of "regular."

Overhead photo of the finished recipe, with the trifle bowl on a festive Christmas plate and a tray of utensils in the background.

Granola (+Gluten Costless Tip)

We generally choose a relatively plain granola. You definitely want ane that doesn't have additions like chocolate or peanut butter that will mess with the flavor combination of your fruit salad.

To exist certain this salad is gluten free, cull a brand of granola that's clearly labeled with a gluten free seal.

Make-Ahead Tips

You know I admittedly love make-ahead recipes. That'south peculiarly true at the holidays, when time is tight. Luckily, this salad is more than merely a pretty face up … information technology'southward got a scrap of make-ahead magic in it, also!

As I mentioned above, both Granny Smith and Honeycrisp apples resist browning fairly well. I've actually been amazed at how this salad, including the apples, still looks pretty terrific – even afterward a couple of days in the refrigerator.

So, you tin can definitely prep everything early in the day for a dinner buffet, or the night before if you're serving this fruit salad for Christmas brunch.

EXCEPT…

*Don't* add the final, crunchy layer of granola and pistachios (or the pomegranate and stars toppings) until closer to serving time.

Side view of the finished fruit salad in a clear trifle bowl, so you can see the layers of red and green Christmas colors.

You tin can measure out the granola and pistachios, mix them together, and have them all ready to go. But, if you sprinkle them on top of the creamy yogurt dressing layer too far in accelerate, they'll sog out a scrap and loose their wonderful crisis.

An hour or 2 ahead volition be fine, simply don't go much more than that.

In Instance Yous Take Leftovers

I've been making this scrumptious Christmas Fruit Salad for at least iii or 4 years at present … and it's such a huge hit … I'yard guessing you probably aren't going to have a lot of leftovers! 😉

But, I know how holiday buffets are. There's always as well much food, and fifty-fifty the very most delicious recipes can't peradventure all be polished off.

If that happens, count yourself lucky, 'cause y'all've got actress fruit salad for your breakfast tomorrow, besides! Yay, yous!

Just think how I said the granola and pistachio layer would get soggy? No trouble – I've got ya covered on this one, too. Simply sprinkle on a niggling extra, fresh granola and some more pistachios.

Poof! The crunch is restored!

Adjusting the Yield

It's easy to adjust this recipe for larger groups by doubling or tripling the ingredients as needed.

Depending on the circumference of your serving basin, y'all'll likely finish up with taller layers, which volition be lovely!

If you have actually deep layers, though, but exist sure to use a long-handled serving spoon so that anybody can dig all the mode through to become a lilliputian bit of each layer. You don't want the offset folks through the buffet line to have a pile of granola on their plates … while the last diners through the buffet are stuck with just green apples and grapes from the lesser of the bowl!

Overhead closeup of about half the bowl of finished Christmas Fruit Salad, with the glass trifle bowl sitting on a festive plate with the serving spoon resting alongside.

Holiday magic in a fruit salad? Why not?!?!

When it's this like shooting fish in a barrel, this pretty, and this delicious … even your Christmas Fruit Salad can be extra-special!

Happy holidays, friends!

Ingredients

i 1/2 cups nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt
3 tablespoons white grape juice (100% juice)
2 cups horizontally halved seedless dark-green grapes
one 1/two cups seeded, chopped greenish Granny Smith apple tree
one cup horizontally halved seedless red grapes
ane cup seeded, chopped scarlet sweetness-tart apple tree (such as Honeycrisp)
3/four cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup pomegranate arils (divided, come across notation)
3/4 loving cup granola (we use Cascadian Farms Oats & Honey)
1/2 loving cup roasted, LIGHTLY salted pistachios (or unsalted, if you can't find lightly salted)
star fruit, pineapple (cut into flat planks) or honeydew melon (cut into flat slices) to make stars

Instructions

In a medium basin, mix together yogurt and juice.
In a second medium bowl, mix GREEN grapes and chopped Granny Smith apples. (Equally directed in the post, if desired, reserve a few dark-green grapes and apple pieces to line the outside of your clear glass serving dish, before calculation the yogurt dressing.) Then, stir 1/4 cup of the yogurt dressing mixture into the (remaining) green grapes and apples. Spoon this mixture evenly into the bottom of your serving basin.
In a tertiary medium bowl, mix Blood-red grapes, chopped Honeycrisp apples, cranberries, and 1/2 loving cup pomegranate arils. (Equally directed in the post, if desired, reserve a few red fruit pieces to line the outside of your dish, before adding the yogurt dressing.) Then, stir 1/4 cup of the yogurt dressing mixture into the (remaining) red fruit mixture. Spoon this mixture evenly into the serving basin, on superlative of your dark-green fruit layer.
Evenly spread the remaining fruit salad dressing on top of the cerise layer, pushing information technology almost the edge merely not fully against the glass (then it doesn't drip down also much and slightly obscure the cherry layer beneath it).
Combine granola and pistachios, and sprinkle them on top of the dressing layer.
Pile almost of the remaining 1/4 cup of pomegranate arils in the center of your fruit salad and sprinkle a few all across the top.
As discussed in the post, to make stars for the top you tin (1) piece a star fruit, or (ii) use a star-shaped cookie cutter or sharp paring knife to cutting stars out of pineapple planks or slices of greenish-white honeydew melon. Lay your stars around the top of your salad.

Notes

Pomegranate arils: To brand prep faster, instead of purchasing a whole pomegranate and removing the arils yourself (like nosotros show you lot how to do in our postal service How to Open a Pomegranate), look for cups of pomegranate arils in the refrigerated section of your grocery shop's produce department.

Serving dish: This colorful Christmas Fruit Salad is prettiest in a articulate glass trifle bowl (like this 1 I used) or straight-sided drinking glass bowl. Alternately, any articulate drinking glass bowl will work. And of form, if you don't have a clear basin at all, it will still taste fantastic, even if you tin can't run across the layers every bit easily.

Make-ahead tips: This fruit salad can be prepped and completely assembled a few hours ahead, or fifty-fifty the night earlier serving EXCEPT for the toppings (the granola, pistachios, etc.). The granola and pistachios will get soggy later on sitting on top of the dressing layer for more than a couple of hours, so it's best to sprinkle those on (and then add the final pomegranate arils and stars on top) closer to serving fourth dimension.

Gluten free note: To exist sure this recipe is gluten gratuitous, purchase a gluten free brand of granola.

Diet Data:

Yield: 18 servings Serving Size: 1/2 cup
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 115 Total Fatty: 3g Saturated Fat: 0g Trans Fat: 0g Unsaturated Fat: 2g Cholesterol: 1mg Sodium: 24mg Carbohydrates: 20g Cobweb: 2g Saccharide: 15g Protein: 3g

Nutrition information should be considered an estimate but, and may vary depending on your option of ingredients or grooming. No guarantees are made regarding allergies or dietary needs. Always consult a doctor or dietician for specific communication and questions.