Fruits on the Bottoms

I bought some of those new Yoplait Oui yogurts, because I like the pots. Near as I can tell, most people who’re buying them are buying them for the pots instead of the contents! Either way, Child Tester really digs this format, where she can get a pretty pot of whatever yogurt with whatever fruit on the bottom from the fridge with the minimum amount of effort possible. As she pressed to buy more of these (she wants 10!) and I continued to decline, I figured I ought to just go on ahead and make our own versions of the fruit preserves, toss them in the same pots with whatever yogurt I’ve made, and call it a day.

You guys should treat this post more like “ideas” than “recipes.” These aren’t recipes, even though I’m going to tell you what happened on my end for each of them. I’ll include measurements where possible. What happened in my kitchen was decided upon based on which fruits were languishing in the fridge or didn’t get eaten during lunches. Fruits you have may vary, and ditto spices, so poke about and have some fun with it!

These jars. Yoplait knows no one is buying these for the yogurt. Wanna know how I know they know? They changed the jars. I have one plain, and 3 with new and cute blue designs on them. I appreciate that they’re giving us what we want and making the jars cooler. I also know because now they sell lids for them. I just ordered. It was $12.34 with shipping for 8 of them (I wanted both colors). It’s kind of weird to work for a probiotics company and talk about Yoplait, but whatever these jars are amazeballs. CT is gonna get her way and I’m gonna buy 4 more of these because I only have 4 jars but will have 8 lids.

Pear, Vanilla, Cardamom

We had corned beef hash for lunch when I decided this one needed to be made, because CT had not finished her half of the pear. I figured this would be nice with some bolder flavors so as to cut through the yogurt more strongly. This made seriously only one portion’s worth, so if you’re into pears, scale it up.

For reference, Barbados molasses is sweeter than the types of molasses Americans are used to. It’s still quite potent, but so much less so that it strikes you as being quite a lot sweeter. It is also unsulphured, and is sometimes called “light molasses.” Do not try to replace this with backstrap molasses, or really any other molasses. You’re gonna get mad at me if you do, and I’m gonna tell you it isn’t my fault you didn’t listen.

Ingredients

most of a half of a pear

couple of drops of vanilla paste

last few drops of a half lime that hadn’t been thoroughly dejuiced

tiniest sprinkle of cardamom

few drops (MAYBE 1/4 teaspoon) Barbados molasses

water

Method

Cut up the pear, and put everything but the water in a small pot, crock pot, whatever it is you’re using. Once you’ve done that, add enough water to cover and simmer until the pear can be lightly crushed with the back of your spoon. You want some texture here, not pear butter. Cook it down a bit more, if needed, to thicken it up. This would also be nice with a sprinkle of brown sugar instead of the Barbados molasses I used.

You can see this made just a little bit. She had this with coconut yogurt, which she made me dye blue part-way through eating it because she said she couldn’t eat Ocean Water without it being the correct blue color. I’m not showing the blue version, because it really looked gross.

Plum and Saffron

I’ve been really into saffron lately for some reason, and I also had a lot of plums. Really, I had all these plums because I had a hard time finding plums, really wanted a cake, then ordered a lot of plums under the presumption that part of my order would be cancelled. It wasn’t, so I had like 4 pounds. I’m working through them but still haven’t made that cake yet.

Anyway, I asked Child Tester what she thought about plum and saffron for one of the fruit compotes, and she said, “yeah, that sounds pretty good!” Cool. She also liked this in smoothies w/ runny activation batches.

If you don’t have saffron, you could use a lot of other spice options for this. Lemongrass would be nice, ditto nutmeg and/or allspice, cinnamon would work, anise seed would be lovely,and you of course can’t go wrong with cardamom.

Ingredients

Around a pound of plums

6 ounces of boiling water

pinch of saffron (roughly 1/8 gram)

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Method

Put your saffron in your measuring cup and pour the water on top. If you powdered your saffron before all this, let it soak 2 hours. If you crushed it, 8-12. If whole, probably 24 hours. You can float all this, but you lose flavor (and therefore money) if you do skimp on the presoaking of saffron. I crushed mine, so I went 6 because I wanted to finish the sauce and go to bed.

Once the saffron has soaked, put everything in a pot and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. Once the plums are soft, you can either hit them for a few seconds with an immersion blender or you can smash the plums with your spoon.

Cherries and Mace

I apparently am using some of my most loved spices for this post. I really love mace. CT, however, does not. So this was a bit tricky deciding how I was going to make this work without making her hate it. I really don’t understand her aversion to mace, and especially when nutmeg doesn’t bother her a bit! If you haven’t got any mace, don’t sweat it. I’d go nutmeg here, or maybe ginger. Oh yeah, ginger would work with those plums, too. This batch is in between the size of the last.

Ingredients

5 ounces pitted cherries

1/16 teaspoon mace (I was going to go heavier, all the way up to 1/8t)

pinch salt

2 tablespoons each: water, some kind of white wine (I had leftover pinot grigio from the last risotto, so I used that)

Method

For this one, I was kind of over it and wanted it to go a little faster, so I dumped everything in and put the lid on, simmering over low heat. I also smashed those cherries with my spoon first a bit, so as to make them release their own juices faster. However, you choose to go about it, do the same slow simmer as above, smashing periodically. You’ll continue cooking it until it’s a really thick sauce, or around one half cup volume.

I forgot about this on the stove until Child Tester said something about things burning. She didn’t mean this, but I sure did scurry on over to the kitchen w/ a quickness! This is the cherry stuff.

Due to my poor planning, I didn’t have the pear one left for a shot of all 3 together. I did 2 plum so you could see all three of the designs of jars I scored!