Happy 2025 to all!
and a pie that's better than the popular fast food dessert
Filipinos have this tradition, or call it ritual for the coming new year. The traditional Media Noche - a feast laid out for NYE dinner (one of the many traditions we inherited from 300 years of Spanish colonisation), and the MUST have spread in every Filipino home before the clock strikes at 12 midnight - the tray or basket of 12 round fruits (or fruits per se). The number varies per family but it is a ritual to usher in the new year with abundance. Round fruits equates to coins or money, and it is a tradition kept by many families, wherever they are in the world. In our home, the girls already know when I’m meticulously curating the basket for the NYE table, because they ask - every year since they were little “can we eat these? Yes, tomorrow! LOL!” There’s always another box or basket for consumption of course, and they know well not to touch the NYE fruit basket!
In the southern hemisphere, we are blessed with the abundance of stone fruits as it is summer in Australia during the Christmas holidays. Fun right? All the cherries, and peaches and mangoes, plums, nectaries, berries! YES! My favourite summer fruits are mangoes and cherries and we buy them by the box!
The downside with the summer weather? Fruits ripen faster than you can consume them. Especially when holiday food shopping becomes exaggerated with all the lunch and dinners hosting.
What to do with the oversupply of fruits when this happens? I have some tricks up my sleeves which we do at home.
Keep them in the fridge before the skins become wrinkled and soft!
Pit them (remove the pits), slice, then ziplock back and freeze! Add to smoothies, shakes or bakes at another day! Or make sorbet!
Bake with them! And here’s a recipe that you can easily customised with fruit on hand!
Peach Mango Pie
Ingredients
100 g butter, melted
2 large mangoes, sliced into cubes
3-4 peaches, sliced into cubes
2 tbsp caster sugar [this is regular white sugar in other parts of the world :)]
1 tbsp corn flour
a pinch of salt
8-10 sheets of filo pastry
Preparation
Using a 20-cm shallow pan, melt half the butter (50 grams) over medium heat. Transfer to a bowl and set aside. In the same pan, add the rest of the butter (50 grams) and melt over medium heat. Add the sliced fruits and cook on medium-low heat until soft. Approximately about 5-8 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent the fruit from sticking to the pan. Add the pinch of salt. In a small bowl, combine the caster sugar and cornflour and mix until incorporated. Add the corn flour mixture into the stewed fruits and continue stirring until the sauce thickens, approximately 5 minutes. Transfer the stewed fruits onto a prepared glass pie dish or baking tray. Scrunch the filo pastry one a time and gently place on top of the fruits. Do this until all sheets cover the pie. Brush the top with melted butter. Cook in a 180*C pre-heated oven for 15 minutes or until golden. Set aside to cool. Serve with a sprig of mint for garnish.
Notes:
Use super ripe mangoes and peaches. Usually in bargain bins in your local green grocer. Sweeter mangoes like the Kensington Pride are great for this recipe You can use a cast iron pan lined with baking paper. Dust with icing sugar optional.
I shared this same recipe with many others last year, as part of my Holiday E-Cookbook, linked here in case you missed it! Download the recipe PDF below!
How about you? What are the holiday traditions you grew up with and carried through adulthood? Maybe you created new traditions as a family? Share them with me! And while you’re here, make this easy pie! It’s delish, I promise!
Oooh. That pie looks great! I didn't always do the 12 fruits tradition as I often forget last minute + we don't finish fruits quick enough at home. This year/last year is one of the years I decided to do 12 fruits. But now, we have so much unfinished fruit. Haha. Here's hoping I can find ways to start using more before they go overripe. :)
I grew up in Baguio, and we always made jam from the abundance of fruit! We stirred one kilo of sugar to one kilo of strawberries and it was the best aroma ever!