Christmas Fruit Salad

This beautifully spiced Christmas fruit salad is the perfect light way to finish off your festive feast. With all the fabulous flavours of a traditional Christmas pudding but none of the stodge it’s a real Christmas cracker!

Why you’ll love this recipe

• This is such an easy dessert to make but it tastes amazing and looks a treat on your festive table
• For those who love the flavours of Christmas but find pudding too heavy then my Christmas fruit salad is the way to go
• Versatility – you can change the fruits and spices to suit your own tastes and what you have available

While I enjoy a good Christmas pudding, after the full Monty of Christmas dinner I do find it a bit much. This Christmas fruit salad is the perfect alternative, it gives me all those flavours I love in Christmas pudding but without the bulk of the pud itself.

Ingredients for Christmas fruit salad

This festive fruit salad is full of fruity goodness, but you don’t have to stick to what I’m using, get creative and add your own goodies or swap things about a bit.

Fruit – I’ve gone for dark red plums, black grapes and red grapes, cranberries and a clementine for what would Christmas be without traditional clementines and their zingy fresh fruity flavour.

Nuts – You can choose your favourites from the nut world. We love walnuts and pecans so I went for a mixed bag of those. A general bag of mixed nuts would be perfect here.

Spices – Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without some spice, ginger and cinnamon are a must for this festive fruit salad, but feel free to add or swap to suit yourself.

Booze – A Christmas pudding needs brandy and so does my Christmas fruit salad. Go for rum or even whisky if you prefer those. Both are good alternatives and marry well with these fruits.

Sugar – I’ve used a soft dark brown sugar here, That rich caramel-like taste is just perfect for roasting the fruits and giving your that true festive flavour.

The complete list of ingredients and full instructions for making this recipe can be found on the printable recipe card at the bottom of this post.

How to make a festive fruit salad

This is such an easy recipe to make with just a few simple steps.

You want to prepare your ingredients first. So wash the clementine in hot soapy water and give it a scrub with a nail brush to remove the protective wax that supermarkets cover their fruit in.

Then simply rinse thoroughly and pat dry before grating off the zest which is packed with flavour and squeeze the flesh to get all that lovely sweet juice out.

Break the nuts up a little and toast them in a dry frying pan. Now watch these guys like a hawk as toasting them takes barely a minute. This is not the time to answer your phone, check facebook or nip to the loo!

The nuts are ready as soon as they start to turn golden and emit the most amazing toasty scent. When this happens immediately tip them out onto a plate as even when you take the pan off the stove the residual heat will continue cooking the nuts and they could easily burn.

Half the plums, remove the stones and lay them out on a baking tray along with the grapes and cranberries.

Pour over the brandy and clementine juice and add the sugar, spices and clementine zest.

Pop them in the oven for about 20 minutes till everything in cooked through.

Carefully remove the tray from the oven and stir through the toasted nuts to mix everything together thoroughly.

By now the kitchen will smell heavenly with that fabulous fruity spicy scent, just like Christmas!

Divide the Christmas fruit salad into serving dishes and allow to cool a little before serving.

Make ahead

You can make this Christmas fruit salad up to a week ahead of time and store in a covered jar in the fridge. Just tip into a small pan and warm it up before serving.

Any leftovers will keep up to a week covered in fridge or you can freeze for up to 3 months.

How to serve Christmas fruit salad

You can either serve this festive fruit salad warm or cold. I like to let it cool quite a bit when it comes out of the oven, so I pop this in the oven just before I serve my starter on Christmas day then allow it to cool whilst we have our turkey.

However, it is just as good served at room temperature so you can easily make it ahead of time and just remove from fridge and leave on the countertop to come to room temperature before serving.

Serve your Christmas fruit salad either with a good quality vanilla ice-cream, with whipped cream or even Greek yogurt just to add a bit of creamy decadence.

I’ve added a sprinkling of pistachio slithers just for extra colour, flaked toasted almonds are great for this too.

Looking for more alternatives to the traditional Christmas pudding? Then check out these recipes before you go.

No-bake Christmas panforte

Spiced Christmas chocolate cake

Easy Christmas baklava

Buche de Noel (Christmas yule log)

For more festive favourites from side dishes to foodie gifts go to my Christmas section for even more great recipe ideas.

Finally, if you do try this recipe don’t forget to leave a comment/star rating below as I just love to hear from readers. Want more Larder Love? Then follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter and sign up for my newsletter too of course.