Fruit Salad with Cottage Cheese, Honey & Nuts
Purple juice from thawing blueberries pools around sliced apple and halved grapes, staining everything it touches. A scoop of cottage cheese lands on top, cool and white against the fruit underneath. Honey goes over everything, mixed nuts scattered last.
670 calories, 19g of protein, and 10g of fiber from six ingredients and about three minutes of work. No cooking, no blender, nothing heated. The nuts carry most of the fat, the fruit carries most of the carbs, and the cottage cheese brings the protein.
Purple juice from thawing blueberries pools around sliced apple and halved grapes, staining everything it touches. A scoop of cottage cheese lands on top, cool and white against the fruit underneath. Honey goes over everything, mixed nuts scattered last.
670 calories, 19g of protein, and 10g of fiber from six ingredients and about three minutes of work. No cooking, no blender, nothing heated. The nuts carry most of the fat, the fruit carries most of the carbs, and the cottage cheese brings the protein.
Ingredients
- blueberries (frozen) 0.75 cup
- apple 1
- grapes 10 piece
- cottage cheese, 4% milkfat 4 tablespoon
- honey 1 tablespoon
- mixed nuts, unsalted 2 ounce
Method
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Let the blueberries thaw for a moment.
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Slice the apple and cut the grapes in half.
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Place the fruit into a serving dish and add the cottage cheese on top of the fruit. Drizzle the honey on the fruit salad and mix together. Top with the nuts.
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Serve and enjoy.
Toss the semi-frozen blueberries with the sliced apple and grapes first, before adding the cottage cheese and honey. As the berries thaw, they release a deep purple juice that coats the fruit and gives the honey something to dissolve into. Two minutes of patience turns a pile of cut fruit into a dressed salad.
Behind this recipe
Can I use fresh blueberries instead of frozen?
Fresh work fine, but frozen have an edge. Freezing disrupts blueberry cell walls through ice crystal formation, which releases the purple pigments (anthocyanins) from storage inside the cells. That makes them more bioaccessible during digestion. Frozen berries also thaw into a natural juice that coats the other fruits and acts as a light dressing.
Read the full evidence reviewThis is 670 calories for a snack. Is that a lot?
It depends on the rest of your day. The 56 grams of mixed nuts contribute most of the fat and a large share of the calories. Halving the nuts brings the total closer to 500 calories while keeping the fruit-to-cottage-cheese ratio intact. The 19g of protein and 10g of fiber also mean this sits heavier than a typical fruit snack, so it may replace two smaller snacks rather than being one of many.
Can I swap cottage cheese for Greek yogurt?
Both work. Cottage cheese holds its shape as a chunky, distinct layer on top of the fruit. Greek yogurt blends in and makes the salad creamier and slightly tangier. The macro profile shifts slightly depending on the brand. Choose based on the texture you want.
