Fruit Kebabs and Fruited Rice Pudding

Today, it's all about making the most of your passion for fruit - that and the fact that the fast-approaching summer is a perfect excuse to treat ourselves to delicious, easy-to-make dishes and desserts that use fruit as their basic ingredient. We'll first have a look at an easy-to-make appetizer (that can also be served as a dessert) and then learn to cook a slightly more elaborate fruit and rice pudding. The key to these recipes is variety. Feel free to mix and match. If the recipe asks you to use strawberries and kiwis that's perfectly fine, but if you're not a strawberry fan or are simply trying out for a little variation, you can easily replace them with just about any other fruit you feel might blend in. Let's get to work.

The appetizer
Fresh fruit kebabs with lemon lime dip

What we need:

4 ounces low-fat, sugar-free yogurt (preferably lemon, but feel free to use other flavor)
6 pineapple chunks
2 kiwi, peeled and diced
6 strawberries
6 red grapes
6 wooden skewers
1 banana cut into 1/2-inch slices
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon lime zest

How to do it:

Whisk together the lime juice, lime zest and the yogurt in a small dish, cover and refrigerate until needed. Thread the pieces of fruit onto the skewers based on preference and colors. One serving is made up of 2 fruit kebabs. Here is the basic nutritional information.

Calories - 160
Cholesterol - 4 mg
Protein - 4 g
Sodium - 45 mg
Fiber - 4 g
Total fat - 1 g
Potassium - 516 mg
Saturated fat - < 1 g
Calcium - 122 mg

The main dish / dessert
Fruited rice pudding

What we need:

1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup crushed pineapple
1/4 cup chopped apricots
1 cup long-grain rice
6 egg whites
4 cups evaporated low-fat / fat-free milk
2 cups of water
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

How we do it:

Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan and cook the rice for about 15 minutes, then drain it thoroughly. Add the milk and the brown sugar. When it's hot, add the rice, the vanilla extract and the lemon zest and allow it to simmer with the heat turned low until the mixture is thick and the rice is tender, which should happen in about 20 minutes. Allow the mixture to cool.

As the rice boils, whisk together the egg whites in a separate bowl and blend them in the rice mixture together with the pineapple, raisins and apricots and stir gently. Preheat the oven to 325 F. Coat a baking dish with butter and flour and pour the mixture of rice and fruit into the dish. Bake it for about 25 minutes. As an added tip, allow it to cool and then refrigerate it for a few hours before serving. Here is the basic nutritional information.


Calories - 170
Cholesterol - 0 mg
Protein - 7 g
Carbohydrate - 36 g
Fiber - 1 g
Total fat - insignificant
Saturated fat - insignificant
Calcium - 320 mg