Yeo Valley Organic Fruit Compote

...course, her local Spar stocks Yeo Valley Organic Fruit Compote. Then, a girl is laughing. And so am I!

It comes in two flavours. One is apricot and prune. Um… with the best will in the world, an apricot and prune compote is not going to satisfy my summer fruit cravings, so I haven't tried it. In any case, it sounds so worthy and boring, does it not, "apricot and prune"? Much better is the Apple, Strawberry, Blackberry and ...
...is heavenly!

Yeo Valley's Organic Fruit Compote is not only fruity yumptiousness, it is also fruity versatility. You could, of course, pig it as you would sweeties, straight out of the pot. And why not? However, hereabouts we also...

● Add a pot to a pint of full fat milk and share it as a milkshake.

● Add a pot to 500ml double cream and put it in the ice cream maker.

● ... more

There is a period from About-February to About-June when something is missing. It is not the sunshine; it is the soft fruit. All through the summer and early autumn, my garden – or my forays to the Pick Your Own farms – provides soft fruit aplenty: strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants. Yum! However, by February, I have used up even the purees I made and froze. I love soft fruits – as they are, or made into pies, crumbles, ice creams, sorbets, smoothies. In February, then, what's a girl to do? A girl could head off to her local disregarding-of-season supermarket, but then she would have to pay outrageous prices for forced, tasteless berries. A girl is far too mean, far too interested in taste and far too conscious of food miles to buy imported soft fruit. February is a depressing time…

… unless, of course, her local Spar stocks Yeo Valley Organic Fruit Compote. Then, a girl is laughing. And so am I!

It comes in two flavours. One is apricot and prune. Um… with the best will in the world, an apricot and prune compote is not going to satisfy my summer fruit cravings, so I haven't tried it. In any case, it sounds so worthy and boring, does it not, "apricot and prune"? Much better is the Apple, Strawberry, Blackberry and Blackcurrant variety. All my favourites – sans raspberries – are in there, so what more could I ask? The pot is like a short, squat yoghurt pot and it contains 225g of compote, or roughly half a pound in old money. Like a pot of cream, it has both a peel-off foil seal and a plastic lid, so that you don't have to use it all in one go. Although, quite how you would NOT use it all in one go is a mystery to me. It looks like mixed fruit jam. It smells like mixed fruit jam, a very upmarket mixed fruit jam at that. It is, though, runnier than a mixed fruit jam. So be careful, or you will dollop it everywhere and it is quite sticky, messy stuff. It has the consistency of thick soup, perhaps, but slightly stick and with chunks of fruit in. It tastes very, very fruity. It is sweet, but not too sweet and there is a tart, sharp after kick. Just the way I like it. I have a sweet tooth and that is probably why I like summer berries so much, but I like the natural sweetness balanced by the fruit's acidity, not a sickly, over-sugared syrup. The strongest flavours are probably the blackberry and apple – in fact, I am not sure I can taste the blackcurrants at all, but I can taste the strawberries. Imagine a slightly sweeter version of the fruit part of a blackberry and apple crumble and you are about there. It is heavenly!

Yeo Valley's Organic Fruit Compote is not only fruity yumptiousness, it is also fruity versatility. You could, of course, pig it as you would sweeties, straight out of the pot. And why not? However, hereabouts we also...

● Add a pot to a pint of full fat milk and share it as a milkshake.

● Add a pot to 500ml double cream and put it in the ice cream maker.

● Add a pot to 500ml plain yoghurt and put it in the ice cream maker.

● Pour it over vanilla ice cream as a sauce.

● Pour it over bread and bake it to make a mini faux summer pudding.

● Whack it on some waffles for a decadent weekend breakfast.

Conor and Kieran like it best in a milkshake. They like it even better when we thicken it up by adding a banana too. Michael likes the pretend summer pudding, but this is a problem because he eats it all himself when no one is looking. My favourite is the ice cream (thanks to thecatsmother hereabouts for the idea!) because homemade ice cream is the thing I am missing the most in these last of the winter months. It is an easy recipe, and it works, you don't need to bother with an egg mousse, just the compote and the cream together make a sharp, but sweet, rich ice cream. It's to die for.

For a treat so yumptious, it is good for you too! There is nothing at all scary on the list of ingredients. In fact, the list is so short I feel quite confident in repeating it here: organic fruit, water, organic sugar, organic lemon juice, pectin. That's it! Not an E number, an additive, a preservative or – because it is organic - a pesticide residue in sight. The fruit content is 65%. Annoyingly, my pot does not actually give the sugar content; I am left to guess from the carbohydrate content, which is 11.2g per 100g, so I would guess sugar is actually running at about 10% of the total. That really is not bad at all. The entire pot contains a paltry 110 calories. My local Spar stocks Yeo Valley Organic Fruit Compote and charges £1.15 for it. Ouch. That is quite expensive for a little pot of fruit sauce, is it not? On the other hand, is it? The fruit ice cream I make with it works out at about half the price of a carton of Ben & Jerry's Berry Nice. We get three smoothies for under a quid and a half – much cheaper than the additive-laden supermarket variants. And have you SEEN the price of imported soft fruits? As soon as the hedgerows, my garden and my local Pick Your Own farms are back in seasonal business, I shall forget about Yeo Valley's Organic Fruit Compote for another year. However, for an out-of-season answer to a girl's soft fruit hankerings, it comes cheap at the price.

Roll on summer though!

 

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