Fruit Salad (Ambrosia)

This is a recipe given to me by my (crazy) Aunt Karen. It's relatively easy to make and serves as an excellent addition to a big breakfast. Or it functions nicely as its own light breakfast. I often use it for breakfast potlucks since it make quite a lot!

Aunt Karen Fruit Salad

Ingredients:
1 can peaches, cut up
1 can pineapple tidbits
1 can mandarin oranges
handful of red grapes, halved
handful of marachino cherries, halved
2 bananas, sliced
1 box tapioca pudding (cooked variety)
1 box coconut pudding (cooked variety)

Directions:
1. Drain all canned fruit, reserving liquid to 3 cups (add water if needed).
2. Mix pudding with reserved liquid and whisk thoroughly.
3. Heat in microwave on HIGH for 3 minutes. Stir well. Repeat once more and again if needs thickening. Stir frequently.
4. Cool pudding mix in refrigerator.
5. Combine all fruit but cherries and bananas with cool pudding. Fold in with spatula.
6. Refrigerate for a couple of hours. Mix in remaining fruit just before serving.

Optional add-ins:
Handful of strawberries, sliced
Handful of dried coconut
Whatever else sounds good!


Notes: I will sometimes use vanilla pudding instead of coconut if I'm serving this to folks who aren't fans of coconut. It still comes out good!

Also, if you're going to add red fruits like cherries and strawberries (which I recommend), make sure you thoroughly rinse/wash and dry them off before adding to the rest of the mix. The red has a tendency to 'bleed' into the rest of the salad!