Cherry Berry Fruit Salad with Mint!

Here’s my favorite incredibly fresh fruity salad that makes your mouth sing! Take advantage of summer's best with every bursting bite of sweetness! 

Fruit salads are perfect for dessert when the weather gets hot. Fresh from the fridge, they cool you off and keep you hydrated. They're always a welcome addition to picnics, get-togethers, and cookouts. Yet they’re also perfect for breakfasts, lunch on the lake, and for desserts on lazy summer nights spent watching fireflies.

If you’ve taken advantage of Azure’s outrageous cherry blowout sale, you may be up to your elbows in ruby-red cherries, and wondering how to use them all. While freezing and canning cherries are great ways to preserve them for the winter, I find I just want to eat a lot of them right now! And since my dessert-of-choice in summer is always a fruit salad, I decided to incorporate cherries as the star of my July fruit salads. 

But I also wanted to change things up a little, so I drizzled my fruit with a juice dressing made of lime and pineapple juices, and I snipped up some fresh mint leaves for a fresh-tasting minty twist. 

Ingredients:

• 2 limes, juiced with zest from peel (QP061)

• 1/4 cup pineapple juice or puréed pineapple (GY1402)

• Mint leaves, about 5

• 5-6 cups watermelon (QP309)

• 1 cup fresh pitted Azure sweet cherries (QP315)

• 1 cup blackberries (FG983)

• 1 cup blueberries (QP884)

For the fruit salad:

I started with watermelon, adding about 5-6 cups of cubed, cold watermelon to a large bowl. Next, I pulled out my Norpro Cherry Pitter (HA007), which made quick work of pitting the cherries! Highly recommend if you process a lot of cherries! 

This cherry pitter makes quick work of prepping cherries!

I used about a cup of cherries in these photos, but after taking the pictures, I went back and doubled the amount for even more cherry bliss! I also dumped in a cup of blackberries and a cup of blueberries. 

For the dressing:

For the juice, mix puréed pineapple chunks or pineapple juice, a teaspoon of lime zest, fresh-squeezed lime juice, and mint leaves.

1. Combine ¼ cup pineapple juice, lime juice from 2 limes, and lime zest in a small bowl and set aside. Add mint leaves. I used these Norpro herb cutting scissors (NF2367) for the first time and was astounded by how much easier and faster they are to use compared to chopping by hand.

   
   

   

   

   
   

2. Combine pitted, halved cherries, blueberries, blackberries, and watermelon. (You could also add grapes, strawberries, and mangoes!)

3. Drizzle the dressing over the top and gently stir using a wooden spoon.

   
   

To dress it up and make it extra-special, and still give a nod to summer festivities, we made these quick-bake star-shaped toppers with pie crust and served them on the side. With a roll-out crust and a sprinkling of sugar crystals, they make a satisfying, buttery tasting cookie. And they took just a few minutes to bake in the toaster oven, so I didn’t have to heat up my kitchen! 

For a topical flair, try adding some mango (QP266) and coconut meat (FG1156)! 

Enjoy within 2 hours for the best texture. Leftover cherry fruit salad can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge 2-3 days. 

If you haven’t eaten it all up in a couple of days, you can always add this to a smoothie, or purée it and freeze it into popsicle molds! 

Another possibility is to add a dollop of whipped cream or serve this over vanilla ice cream. 

Enjoy!