Summer Fruit Salad with Vanilla, Lime, and Ginger

This beguiling Summer Fruit Salad transforms even the most delicious fresh fruit into an ambrosial delight. Tart, sweet, and floral red berries are kissed with agave nectar, warm vanilla, citrusy lime, and just a touch of zingy ginger to create a luscious, flavourful combination that tempts as much for dessert as it does for breakfast.

I love fresh fruit in many forms, and in the summer when fruit is at its peak, I relish eating red fruits such as cherries, strawberries, and raspberries with a creamy, refreshing accompaniment. For breakfast, or if I feel like eating healthfully, I’ll pair this fruit salad with simple unsweetened greek or coconut yogurt. If I’m feeling more in the mood for a treat, a luscious scoop of vanilla bean ice cream is my preferred pairing, and to be completely forthright, this is the pairing I most highly recommend!

Jump to:

• Ingredient notes
• A fruit salad needs a dressing!
• Preparing the fruit
• Serving Summer Fruit Salad
• Substitutions
• Hungry for other sweet treats ?
• Summer Fruit Salad

Ingredient notes

For this delicious fruit salad, you’ll need a selection of fresh fruit, and I suggest cherries, strawberries, and raspberries. See substitutions for ideas on other fruit choices depending on what is in season or what is available in your area.

Agave syrup or nectar is the ideal sweetener for its neutral flavour and syrupy texture. When I run out of agave, I use a light maple syrup in its place.

I suggest using vanilla paste here for its relaxed, vanilla rich flavour and enticing flecks of vanilla bean; vanilla extract can easily be substituted if that is on hand or more readily available.

A fruit salad needs a dressing!

A notable fruit salad needs more than just a mixture of plain fruit tumbled together; just like a memorable green salad, it needs a flavorful dressing to enhance the main ingredients. Here, sweet and neutral agave nectar is infused with the sour and balancing flavour of lime juice and zest, the mellow warmth of vanilla paste, and the zip of a small amount of freshly grated ginger. Add this to fresh red fruits and you have an alluring complement to elevate juicy fresh fruit.

For the lime zest, you can choose to zest the lime with a classic citrus zesting tool for longer, thin strips, or use a microplane for finer zest that is more easily spread throughout the dressing.

As for the grated ginger, make sure to use a microplane, a ginger or garlic grater, or the absolutely smallest grater possible. The trick here is to infuse the fruit salad dressing with a hint of zingy flavour, not to have big spicy chunks spread throughout.

When making this fruit salad, I like to make the dressing first so that the flavours have time to meld together and create something akin to an infused simple syrup. To create the dressing, simply add the agave, vanilla paste, lime zest, lime juice, and finely grated ginger. Mix and set aside while you prepare the fruit.

Preparing the fruit

While raspberries need nothing more than a gentle wash, and strawberries a quick hulling to remove their leafy green tops, followed by cutting in half or quarters for larger berries, cherries need a little preparation to remove their pits.

Using the flat side of a large knife, position a small handful of cherries on a cutting board and press down on the cherries, which loosens the pit. You may find that you can then easily tear the cherries apart with your fingers to remove the pits, or you may need the help of a smaller knife to split the fruit first before flicking the pits out.

An alternate option to remove cherry pits is to use a manual cherry pitter, a useful kitchen helper to keep on hand as it both pits cherries and olives, ingredients I use regularly in various dishes. 

Gently pile the fruit into the bowl containing the dressing; add any fruit juices that have collected on your cutting board if you can. Using a spoon or thin spatula, ever so gently mix the dressing and the fruit together.

Serving Summer Fruit Salad

Summer Fruit Salad can be served in one large bowl or in individual servings, for breakfast or dessert, on its own or with yogurt (vegan or dairy), or my special favourite, with a melting scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, for pure summertime bliss.

Substitutions

My choice of fresh fruit for this fruit salad is a selection of red berries such as cherries, strawberries, and raspberries; however, choose the fruit that appeals to you and that is available. Anything from purple fruits, such as figs, blackberries, blueberries and even grapes, to stone fruits such as peaches, nectarines, and apricots, in any combination, would be enhanced by this delicious preparation.

Hungry for other sweet treats ?