What’s your opinion on fruit salad? While many think it’s a delicious and refreshing side dish to go along with a heartier dinner, others have mixed reviews of the dish. To be fair, a great fruit salad is highly dependent on the ingredients that go into it and how fresh they are. Let’s face it, having a fruit salad chock full of dry, old or unripe fruit is not very satisfying. Nor is it good when it’s full of filler fruits that just aren’t very flavorful (we’re looking at you, honeydew melon).
Fortunately, we have an incredible recipe for you today that will make you reimagine just what a fruit salad can really be. If a typical fruit salad is more of an appetizer before a real meal, this one is leaning more towards the dessert side of the spectrum with how delicious it is. That’s right, today we’re doing a Hawaiian cheesecake fruit salad. This one comes full of delicious tropical and citrusy fruits as well as a cheesecake filling that is one of the best things we’ve tasted at a backyard cookout. So let’s get started.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- 1 eight-ounce package of cream cheese
- 1 3.4 ounce package of instant cheesecake pudding mix
- 1 cup of french vanilla creamer
- 1 pound of strawberries
- 4 mandarin oranges in sections
- 1 can of pineapple tidbits (drained)
- 3 kiwi cut into crescents
- 2 mangoes
- 1 banana cut into slices
- juice of 1/2 a lemon
Here’s what you do:
1. First, begin by preparing all your fruits by chopping them up, taking the cores out of the strawberries, peeling all your fruits and breaking them into bite-sized pieces.
2. After that, get out a medium bowl and an electric mixer. Dump in your cream cheese and whip it until it goes completely smooth. Add in your dry pudding mix and beat that as well. Next, turn your mixer on low and gradually add in the creamer to the mix as well, about a tablespoon at a time. Keep doing this until you’ve added all the creamer and the resulting mixture is smooth.
3. In another larger bowl, throw in your strawberries, pineapple, kiwi, oranges and mango. Once it’s all in there, pour your cheesecake mixture in as well and gently fold everything together until it’s well-incorporated.
4. Get another small bowl and toss in your banana slices as well as your lemon juice. Toss the bowl or stir to make sure everything is coated and drain out the excess juice. Finally, add the bananas into the cheesecake salad bowl as well.
5. With everything combined, chill the bowl in the fridge for a few hours and then you’re ready to serve!
While this may not be the lightest fruit salad you’ve ever had, it’s definitely likely to be one of the most delicious. While you can experiment with which fruits you want to include in the mixture, following these instructions relatively closely is important to make sure the salad turns out correctly and mixes together smoothly. For example, don’t add all your creamer at once! If you do, the mix will clump up and will stay that way no matter how long you beat it. Once it’s done, this recipe is sure to be a hit at whatever party you’re planning on throwing. Let us know what you think!
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