Tutti Fruitti/ Colorful Candied Fruits/Tutty Fruity

This is a sweet colorful confectionery often used in making ice-creams, custards or buns. They are often used as toppings in desserts.

In India, tutti fruitti is referred to the colorful , sweet raw papaya cubes. As a child , I often had sweet tutti fruitti buns and cakes and used to wonder how these candied fruits were made. Infact it’s quite simple and easy to make. I will be shortly adding the tutti fruitti bun and cake recipes too

Preparation time ( incl resting hours): 16 hours Cooking time: 30 mins

Servings : 240 g

Ingredients

• 400g Raw papaya, peeled
• 13/4 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3-4 drops of various Food coloring gel as desired
• 6 cups water

Steps to prepare

• Chop raw papaya into small (fine) pieces

• Boil 3.5 cups water in a vessel and add papaya to it

• Cook until the papaya cubes are semi-transparent.

• Drain excess liquid from papaya, add vanilla extract to papaya. Mix well and keep it aside

• Add sugar with 2.5 cups water in a pan. Boil the liquid

• Stir until sugar is dissolved completely

• Add papaya cubes to boiling sugar syrup

• Boil papaya cubes in sugar syrup until it’s tender, it takes approx 20 minutes. Papaya should be cooked , yet it should retain it’s shape

• Sugar syrup should have reached one string consistency. Switch off the heat

• Divide papaya cubes with sugar syrup in 3 or 4 bowls

• Add food color to each bowl and mix well. Generally, it’s made of 3 or 4 primary colors. Red, green and yellow being the most commonly used food color for tutti fruitti. I have used Orange as 4th color. You can add the food color as desired. Cover the bowls and let it rest for 14-24 hours

• Drain sugar syrup from each bowl. Discard the sugar syrup

• Transfer candied papaya to kitchen towel and pat them dry

• Let them dry over clean kitchen towel for 2-3 hours. The candied papaya should be dry from all sides

• Now mix all of them together, they will not stick. Store in air tight container and refrigerate. Use as required