Fruit Soup

Fruit soup was something my grandma made a lot of.  It was a staple around the holidays but could be found in her fridge just about any time of the year.

A few years ago I asked her for the recipe for Ham Loaves.  This is the note that accompanied that recipe.

The cookbook has many classic Carlson recipes in it.
One of which of course is Grandma's Fruit Soup.  So, here goes nothing...

I gathered the ingredients.  Dried fruit, that's easy.  Grape juice, no problem.  Cinnamon stick, already gathered that from Grandma her self.  Tapioca pearls, now there was a problem.  Walmart? No.  Kroger? No.  Publix?  No.  K&S?  Yes!  To give you an idea the kind of grocery store K&S is I will tell you that  it is the place I get my goat meat (I'll explain later if you ask).  The point is I found the tapioca.

Here are my gathered ingredients...

The next step is putting it all in a big pot to soak.  I got out my big pot and added 10 cups of water, the ingredients you see above and then went to get the 1 1/2 cups of sugar.  The one ingredient I wasn't worried about.  Well, to my surprise I had less than 1 cup of sugar in my cupboard.  Doh.  With Lucas sleeping upstairs I was only given one choice.  Call the neighbor.   Luckily Leslie was home and was willing to give up 1 cup of her sugar.  To tell you the truth it made me feel a little old fashioned to have to borrow a cup of sugar from my neighbor.  I kinda liked the unexpected disruption.


I started the soaking process around 3pm and since the recipe is vague and says "couple hours" I let it go until after dinner.

At 7 pm I started the boiling and let it boil for 30 min.

The smell of Christmas started to fill the house.  It was amazing! 

Here is the finished product!  

I don't know why but I've only seen fruit soup in jars.  

It doesn't belong in any other kind of container.  :)

Now for the review:

I have to say I am not very found of the fruit soup flavor (this is not new news).  It did have that familiar taste and because of that I will eat it proudly!  :)

I would make sure you use LARGE tapioca pearls.  The recipe didn't specify and the little ones I used melted very quickly into the liquid.

The grape juice says "optional" and I just added it to the 10 cups of water but I think next time I would change the water to 8 cups with the 2 cups of grape juice.

The Beginning

I am starting this blog in memory of my Grandma.  Even as I write that it doesn't sound right.  It's hard to believe that she has left us to go be with Jesus.  We will miss her more than words can express.

My Grandma Pauline loved to bake and has many wonderful recipes.  I have many of them and I don't want them to collect dust.  I am going to use this blog as an outlet for her recipes.  Before I get to baking I wanted to give you a little bit of a background on who my Grandma was.  She was born to Swedish immigrants.  Her parents owned a bakery in Red Oak, IA.  They were open during the depression when sugar was rationed which you can imagine would make it hard to bake.  People would give them their rations of sugar in exchange for baked goods.  Clever, I'd say.  As I go through the recipes she's given me I think of all the people that were fed by my Grandma.  So many stories...  I can't wait to start.