Apple Salad with Fruit

Apple Salad with Fruit: A quick dessert or side dish idea, full of fruit that easy to make for a potluck or to keep on hand for guests visiting.

Whether you’re looking for an apple salad dessert like this one, or if you’re looking for a lettuce salad that contains apples… then you’re in luck! Scroll down to get this dessert-like apple salad recipe, or visit the 25 apple salad recipes that I gathered for you that includes everything from lettuce salads with apples, to more dessert style apple salad recipes!

Then, if you’re feeling like a total salad fan right now, you’ll want to make sure that you visit the best salad recipes here on the blog, especially this honey lime fruit salad!

Apple Salad

I’m a sucker for a dessert that’s full of chocolate, and I typically bypass pies, ice creams and fruit salads at any gathering I attend, but I must say… I fell in love with this dessert idea.

I’m also going to go out on a limb here and say that I’d even try to squeeze in this apple salad as a side dish idea.

Yes, it has pudding in it… but the fruit, nuts, and yogurt are sometimes side items, right?

Ok, we’ll call it a dessert, but just know that if you come over for a visit, you may find this on the table during dinner time, too.

Apple Salad Ingredients

You can find the full recipe and instructions at the end of this post, but I wanted to go into a little more detail about what you can use and substitute if you don’t have these on hand.

For this recipe, it really is forgiving and can be made a lot of different ways. 

Yogurt + Pudding

For mine, I wanted to use vanilla yogurt AND vanilla pudding. You can use all yogurt or all pudding if you like, but if you have both on hand, mixing the two creates a crazy good flavor.

Although I made my pudding from an instant pudding box, you can keep things super quick and easy and buy vanilla pudding already made!

Nuts + Fruit

Feel free to switch out the different nuts depending on your preference, but I used candied pecans and dried cranberries, because they come in a package together at Walmart, making it super easy.

Then, I also used red grapes for a soft texture, and it was the perfect addition!

Core + Cut Apples

Of course you can cut your apples using a knife, but I absolutely love using an apple corer. It makes things that much faster, and less chances for seeds to end up in my apple salad.

For this salad, I still use a knife to cut them in to cubes, but it still speeds up the process for sure!

Once the apples, cranberries + nuts and grapes are in the bowl, it’s time to add in the yogurt and pudding.

(You can mix up the pudding and yogurt first and add it in, or you can do what I did and add them in separately. It all mixes in well regardless.)

Once it’s all mixed together, you can serve it immediately or store for later.

I prefer to eat it immediately, but it’s good leftover too!

I hope you enjoy this recipe! Make sure to check out the other easy salad recipes to add to your favorites!

Or, go all in and make dinner time super easy and grab my cookbook where I’ve created complete meal plans for you! Find more details about the Fabulously Fast Dinners cookbook!