Yogurt Parfait

So DH And I have been in New York and returned home after about two weeks and I’ve been craving lighter healthier foods since we went on a grand steak eating mad pash. While it was awesome and tasty, I finally lost the kilo and a half that I gained and now it is summer fruit season and we are enjoying the incredible produce that we wait for all year. This is the amazing cherries, apricots, nectarines etc. which we gobble up in bucketfulls.

I was yearning for something light and delectable for breakfast.

I’d bought a packet of granola overseas although we have tons of great granola here, I needed to use it (or make your own from my recipe, Homemade Crunchy Granola). I nearly always have some plain naturally sweetened yogurt and of course the bucketfulls of cherries et al. So I decided to put it all together for a lovely parfait which is so delish that you could make it a dessert as easily as breakfast and as breakfast for dinner. In fact, since the holiday of Shavuot is upon us, it can be a lighter healthier treat than cheesecake (or have both! Cheesecake for Dorie) and you could make a yogurt bar, i.e. stacks of yogurts, cut up fruits and bowls of granola and let people make their own!

You will begin to layer everything in a glass dish or cup so that you can see the effect of the layers which adds to the beauty of the final dish.

So gather your ingredients together.

Cut the cherries in half and remove the pits and stems and chunk the apricots and nectarines.

Scoop out about a quarter cup of granola. Now select your bowl or cup, I prefer the glass so you can see how pretty it is, to my mind this adds to the whole effect.

Start with the plain yogurt and if it is unsweetened shake a little bit of light brown or demerara sugar onto it and then sprinkle some of the granola on top of the yogurt.

Take your cut up apricots, nectarines and cherries and layer this over the granola.

Place another layer of the yogurt on top of the cut up berries and sprinkle that with a little sugar on top with a sprinkling of the granola and the fruit, doing one more layer if your dish can hold it.

The juice of the cherries sinks into the yogurt and creates an incredibly delicious flavor. This looks like a beautiful dessert but it is really something that is healthy and is a no guilt treat.

DH the first time I prepared this for him was like, why? I’ll just eat some cut up fruit. I urged him to try a coupla bites (and he was clearly humoring me) and he did. Whoa! That parfait was snorfed down so fast it’s good I made myself a separate one! Suffice it to say, whenever we have good fruits that lend themselves to the parfait, it’s on!

Yogurt Parfait

This serves one person generously!

1 container plain or lightly sweetened yogurt
6-8 cherries, pit and stem removed, sliced in half
2 nectarines, pitted and chunked
1-2 apricots, pitted and chunked
1/4 cup or 4 tablespoons crunchy granola
1 teaspoon demerara or light brown sugar

Directions:

Take a large glass cup or medium bowl to hold all ingredients. Layer some yogurt in the glass, sprinkle with some granola and a bit of sugar. Scatter some cut up fruit on top and repeat all the layers until you’ve used them up and your glass cup/bowl is full of bursting goodness.