Fruit Salad with Chocolate Custard

After 2 days of rich, sinful chocolate decadents, I wanted to make something light and healthy. I wanted to make something with fruits and was not sure what to make. Then I thought about fruit salad or custard sweet. When I was growing up, fruit salad was a very common sweet. Fruit salad or the custard sweet is nothing but fruits served with vanilla custard or vanilla pudding.

Here in the US, lot of people use Jell-O instant pudding mix to prepare custard and it tastes fine. It is instant and custard is ready to serve in 3-5 minutes but I prefer the taste of cooked custard better. I use Jell-O once in a while but I like the cooked custard better. I buy the custard powder from the Indian store and cook it on the stovetop. Jell-O has lot of instant pudding flavors and I like their chocolate flavor. So I decided to make fruit salad with chocolate custard. I was out of Jell-O chocolate pudding mix and made it from scratch with corn starch (corn flour as it is called in India) and cocoa powder.

Corn starch is used to make pie filling and once in a while I use it to make mock/white custard when I don’t have the Indian custard powder. Today I added some coco powder to the boiling milk for chocolate flavor. The taste was good! U thought it was a little chocolaty but I loved it... 🙂 I made two batches. The first was thick custard (I used 1 ½ tbsp. corn starch), more like pudding and the other was flowing custard (1 tbsp. corn starch). I liked the little thicker version of the custard, although flowing custard is preferred for fruit salad.

Total Time: 15 – 20 minutes (excludes cooling time)
Preparation: 5 – 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes
Serves: 3 – 4

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Milk
• 1 – 1 ½ tbsp. Corn Starch (It is called corn flour in India. I suggest using 1 ½ tbsp. Corn Starch )
• 1 ½ - 2 tbsp. Cocoa Powder (I used Nestle Tall House baking cocoa powder)
• 4 tbsp. Sugar (adjust to taste)
• ¾th Apple chopped
• 15 Seedless Grapes cut into 2
• ½ can (8 oz. can) Pineapple Chunks
• ½ can (11 oz. can) Whole Mandarin Orange Sectors

Preparation:

• Take ¼ cup milk in a bowl and mix it with corn starch.
• Take remaining 1 ¾ cups of milk in a pan and bring it to a boil. I prefer wide pan when making custard. Whisk or stir the milk constantly to avoid burning of milk.
  

  

  

• Once the milk boils, add cocoa powder and stir well.
• Reduce the flame to low and gradually add corn starch mixture to boiling milk and stir/whisk well. Increase the flame to medium and continue to whisk/stir. It is crucial to whisk continuously to avoid lump formation.

  

• When the custard comes to a good boil, turn off the heat. OR continue to boil until the custard is thick and of desired consistency. Do remember, custard thickens as it cools.
  

  

• Sprinkle sugar over hot custard and let it cool.
  

  

• Once the custard is cold, mix well and chill the custard until ready to serve.
• When it is cut to serve, cut the fruits and add it to the custard.

Note:

• Jello-O instant chocolate pudding can be used for chocolate custard.
• The fruits I mentioned in the ingredient list are approximate quantities. Use less or more depending on your taste and use any variety of fruit.
• I used 1% milk to prepare custard and one can use 2% or whole milk to make the custard rich. OR can add some whipped cream or chocolate ice cream to make custard rich.

Recipes posted this day, in 2011: Spinach Orange Soup

Blogging Marathon: To know more about the various themes and participating bloggers for this marathon, checkout the blogging marathon page on Srivalli's blog.

Event Entries: Sending these brownies to Srivalli's Chocolate Mela, to Srav's Cooking Concepts # 6: Chocolate Fest and Ramya's ABC Series: Desserts.