Jumbleberry Fruit Bake with Pecans, for Dessert or Breakfast.

Here's a little something fun that will help you use up any frozen berries and fresh apples you may have hanging around.  It's good hot or cold, and could be dessert, breakfast, or a fun and healthy lunchbox treat. 

  

I started out with a recipe out of one of my favorite cookbooks The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook, by Tom Malterre and Ali Segerston.  Their recipe was for apple-cranberry crisp (which is a fantastic recipe!  I've made it lots of times in the past...highly recommended!), but I didn't want the topping (can't tolerate oats), and I wanted just a very quick and simple baked fruit dish, so here's what I ended up with, loosely based on their recipe:

Preheat oven to 375

• 3 very large organic Fugi apples, or 4 or 5 small apples, fairly thinly sliced
• 3 cups mixed berries (I used Costco mixed berries--blueberries, blackberries and raspberries)
• 2 T arrowroot powder (a natural thickener, available in health food stores)
• 2 T. lemon juice
• 2 T. sucanat (Sucanant is a dehydrated, unrefined cane juice: or you could use other sweetener of choice--pure maple sugar, or coconut sugar would probably work just fine too...)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

Mix together in a large bowl, then transfer to a 9x13 baking dish.  Top with:

• a handful of chopped pecans.

Bake, about 40 minutes, but may take more like 45 or 50 minutes depending on how thick your apples were cut, and how thawed your berries were--my berries were frozen solid, so it took about 55 minutes.  Cover if it starts to brown on top.  It's done when the juices look bubbly and the apples are tender.

I call this Jumbleberry Fruit Bake because when I tasted it, it tasted exactly like a dessert they serve at our favorite local restaurant. They call theirs Jumbleberry Pie, but it's just basically fruit baked like this, nestled into a pretty martini glass, and topped with pretty, artfully-shaped pieces of pie crust instead of pecans.

Enjoy!



Sorry, this is not the prettiest picture!  You can see where I already impatiently delved into the lower right-hand corner. :)