Fruit and vegetable baskets are a great opportunity to discover or eat fruit that you are not necessarily used to buying. Dozens of recipes exist depending on the fruit and the season.
Recipes with spring fruits
Having fruit baskets delivered to the office is a good opportunity to use some organic fruit to make recipes with seasonal products. For example, spring is an ideal season to make recipes with apples, bananas, nectarines or peaches.
With apples, the most popular and easiest recipe to make is the traditional apple pie. This recipe requires only shortcrust pastry, golden apples, a little vanilla sugar and butter and can be made in just one hour. To use bananas, a cake is the most obvious choice and only fairly basic ingredients are needed: sugar, butter, eggs, flour and baking powder.
Recipes based on nectarines or peaches are less common, but these fruits are delicious when made into jams. It is also possible to make clafoutis, pies, crumbles or flans from them, depending on individual tastes.
Recipes with summer fruits
In summer, fruit and vegetable baskets contain lots of fruit for juicing: nectarines and peaches (white and yellow), but also lots of pears, apricots and plums. Summer is an ideal season for organic fruit and vegetables.
Juice fruits can be used primarily to make drinks. Passed through an extractor, they can fill a large glass with a small amount. If you want to keep all the nutrients and fibre from the fruit, it is best to make smoothies instead. To make these recipes, you only need the fruit, a yoghurt and/or milk according to your preferences.
In summer, a very popular recipe is fruit sorbet. This recipe can be made with lots of fruit, water and sugar. For more success, however, it is recommended to use an ice-cream maker. However, you can make an ice cream only with bananas. Simply cut one into pieces, put it in the freezer in a cool bag and mix for a few minutes until a creamy consistency is obtained.
Recipes with autumn fruit
In autumn, organic fruits and vegetables are legion. There are lots of apples and pears, but also plums, greengages and lots of grapes. The most popular fruits are usually Muscat grapes and comice pears and there are many recipes for using them in cooking. These fruits are popular with vegetarian recipes.
With muscat grapes, the simplest recipe is probably the clafoutis, which requires very simple ingredients: sugar, butter, flour, eggs, milk (but also a small tablespoon of rum). If you want to innovate a little, you can use muscat grapes in sweet and sour dishes. For example, it goes very well with warm goat's cheese toast.
Recipes based on pears are a little more well-known and you are spoilt for choice, although pear pie is still the most popular option. This recipe can also be made with plums or greengages. The latter also go very well with other fruits that are less well known but very similar to it: quetsches and mirabelle plums. You can make jams with these naturally sweet fruits, they will be very appreciated.
Recipes with winter fruits
We don't think much about eating fruit in winter, yet nuts or fruits with peel are particularly tasty during the cold season: clementines, oranges, walnuts, lychees... Winter pears are also very popular. Many recipes can be made, especially around Christmas.
Oranges and clementines are perfect juice fruits for making cold drinks in the morning, or smoothies. But these fruits can also be used to decorate recipes, and go very well with chocolate. A chocolate-orange smoothie is often very popular.
Nuts can also be useful in the kitchen, especially when ground. Many chocolate recipes, for example, require a certain amount of nut powder. It is not uncommon to use nuts or chestnuts in savoury dishes at Christmas, if you are looking for more original ideas.