Cold Swedish Fruit Soup is a wonderful fall or winter dish when you’re beginning to miss those fresh peaches, apricots, plums, and cherries. This extremely easy-to-make soup, which uses mostly dried fruits, can be eaten as a nice light dessert or luncheon dish. The soup is ideal for vegetarians and vegans.
The kind of fruits you use is strictly arbitrary. Just use whatever you like best. And even amounts used are extremely flexible in this recipe. I chose dried apricots, peaches, prunes, cranberries, cherries, currants, and fresh lemon and apple slices for my Swedish Fruit Soup recipe. For another Swedish-inspired recipe see my Swedish Nut Bread.
With a pair of scissors, snip the apricots, peaches, and prunes into small pieces.
Snip the fruits with a scissors.
In a three-quart stainless steel or enamel pot, soak the apricots, peaches, prunes, cranberries, and cherries in 7 cups of cold water for 30 minutes.
To the dried fruits, add the tapioca (which just slightly thickens the soup), the cinnamon stick, lemon slices, allspice berries, cardamom seeds, and the juniper berry. The allspice, cardamom, and juniper berries are completely optional, but I find they bring a nice complexity to the flavor. Bring the fruits to a boil, stirring.
Reduce the heat, cover the pot, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent the fruit from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
In the meantime, peel, core, and slice the apples 1⁄2-inch thick.
Add the currants and apple slices, and simmer for another 5-10 minutes until the apple slices are just tender.
Cook the fruits.
Turn off the heat. Remove the cinnamon stick, the cardamom seeds, and the juniper berry. Let the soup cool to room temperature, then chill it in the refrigerator until cold.
Serve the Swedish Fruit Soup plain or with a dollop of yogurt. When I serve Swedish Fruit Soup for lunch, I like to accompany it with a slice of pumpernickel-raisin bread spread with cream cheese.
