Tired of the same old cereal for breakfast? Go creative and healthy with a breakfast yogurt-berry parfait. Here’s how to make it:
Take ½ cup of your favorite low-fat yogurt and cover with a handful of assorted fresh berries to include raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. Add sliced bananas over the yogurt and berries, sprinkle with honey granola, and top with some shredded coconut. Lastly, drizzle the parfait with fresh honey before digging in.
What’s great about this recipe is that it’s easy to make, plus it’s tremendously flavorful and healthy. It’s also versatile so you may omit the ingredients that you don’t like and increase what you love.
Chef Judy’s Tip: If you wish, you may macerate your fresh strawberries. The main reason behind performing this technique is to make less sweet tasting and less ripe strawberries both sweeter and softer, which ultimately elevates the flavor and texture profiles. Fruits that are macerated are softened and sweetened by being soaked in a liquid. Most often, strawberries are macerated in sugar to pull out the natural juices of the fruit and turn it into a syrup. This is done by placing clean, hulled, and sliced fruit into a bowl. You may slightly mash the berries if you wish. Then, sprinkle with 2 Tbsp. of sugar per one cup of fruit. Stir, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours until a liquid syrup forms. Generally, the longer the berries macerate, the more syrup is produced and the softer the fruit becomes. Macerated strawberries are delicious in parfaits, as in the recipe above, especially when simple fresh ones are hard and lack flavor. Macerated berries may be served over ice cream, cake, or brownies. They are equally delicious as part of a cocktail, such as a regular or virgin strawberry Mojito, adding an extra sweet punch to the delicious citrusy and herby beverage.
