Almond Butter Fruit Dip

Sometimes unexpected things happen in the kitchen.

Sometimes they are more of the unwelcome variety. For example, this morning I was getting supper ready to go in the slow cooker. I quickly reached into the refrigerator to grab a box of chicken broth and immediately started shaking it up. Suddenly everything was covered! If I had been a little bit more careful and had payed any attention to what I was doing at all, I would have noticed that the little tab was not secure. So I totally covered not only the kitchen, but also my poor Little Monkey who happened to be standing right in the line of fire. And let me tell you, she did not appreciate it either. I, being the very picture of maturity, thought it was pretty darn funny; and proceeded to teasingly tell her I was going to eat her since she smelled so delicious.

That probably didn’t help her feel better about the situation. Oh well. The Dude would have appreciated it, but she was at preschool. Le sigh.

So there are the not so great unexpected kitchen happenings, but there are also some delicious ones.

Remember back when I made this breakfast cake? Well, when I was tasting as I went along making that cake, I found out something quite unexpected.

There is a second little recipe hidden inside.

A tasty fruit dip recipe.

Oh yes.

If you stir together a little almond butter, Greek yogurt, brown sugar, and vanilla; bam! Sliced fruit just turned into a more interesting and filling snack.

This stuff is crazy good. Super rich and nutty (duh!) from the almond butter, with a little tang from the yogurt. It is sweet, obviously, but not so much that it overpowers the sweet fruit slices you have going on. And it really does make a filling snack (ahem…or lunch..oops), thanks to all of the protein and healthy fats that are packed in from the almonds and yogurt. Score!

Almond Butter Fruit Dip

3/4 cup almond butter (you can whip up my recipe found here)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt

1 tablespoon vanilla

Stir together almond butter and brown sugar until well combined.

Fold in Greek yogurt and vanilla.

May be served immediately or after a couple of hours left in the refrigerator to chill with fruit slices, graham crackers, pretzels, etc.

Grandma Amy’s Secret Fruit Salad Dressing

I always imagined I would keep this recipe a secret.

I am seriously in love with the phenomenon of the Old Southern Biddie who has her secret recipe that she absolutely refuses to give away.

I always wanted to have one of those recipes, and I thought this could be it.

I imagined people would come over to my house, plop the fruit salad on their plates, unsuspectingly sample one bite, and then scream in ecstasy, “This is the best fruit salad I have ever had!” They would all then proceed to follow me around for the rest of the day begging for the recipe, but I would never cave.

(I have illusions of grandeur. Humor me.)

I imagined I would keep it a secret until my death bed. Whereupon I would raise a shaky finger beckoning my favorite grandchild, and whisper the location of the recipe that I had scribbled on the back of a crossword puzzle years before.

Then I started a food blog and said, “Meh….what’s the point in that?”

There really isn’t too much to say about this one.

It makes a ho-hum bowl of chopped up fruit feel fancy.

It makes someone like The Hubs (who’s traditional idea of late night dessert snack is a candy bar) eat two bowls full in one sitting.

It’s the kind of thing you can eat out of fancy little goblets with a sprig of mint, or straight out of the fridge with a fork at midnight while standing in your socks and underwear.

This dressing is silly easy and is literally good on any kind of fruit you wanna cut up. Just go with what ya’ got. And I wouldn’t get all flustered about having a lot of different types of fruit to go in it either. If all you have is apples, just do that. Really. It would be delicious!

It calls for a whopping four ingredients: lime, honey, fresh ginger, and vanilla.

Please, go ahead and buy fresh ginger root. You can use the dried, ground variety if you insist; but the flavor of fresh ginger just pops so magically on the fruit. You can keep it forever by putting it in a plastic baggie and into the freezer. Just grate off what you need at the time and put it back. You can use it in a lot of Asian dishes, fancy up your lemonade, but if you are anything like the members of this household, you will have to make more fruit salad after about an hour anyway so the whole root will come in handy.

Simply given them a whirl with a fork.

Here is the Little Dude with a little demo…

Now pour it all over your fruit.

And voila! Your basic fruit salad just got all gussied up!

Grandma Amy’s Secret Fruit Salad Dressing

Enough for 4-5 cups of chopped fruit

Juice of 1 lime

1 1/2 tablespoon honey

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated ginger

1/2 teaspoon vanilla