Hi. A friend asked me this and the only thing I could think of was to use a little lemon juice on them.. but who wants their bananas to taste lemmony? It seems like my grandmother used pectin in some way (powdered or mixed with water) to help ensure their color and nice appearance.
Do any of you have any suggestions?
Thanks!
L.
Edit - She's making these little toothpick "santas" that have a grape, a slice of banana, a triangle of strawberry and then a tiny marshmallow on top to look like a santa of sorts. So there really isn't an acidic fruit with it like there would be with a fruit salad, which I totally agree with lemon juice in that. It's just a small cirlcle of banana between a grape and strawberry.
Allegedly, Edible Arrangements dips the browning fruits like apples and kiwi into pineapple juice to preserve them. I have no idea whether or not that's true but a friend who makes her own Edible Arrangements swears by it.
Fruit fresh. You can find it in any grocery story.
It's powdered ascorbic acid (vitamin c). So it does the same thing as a lemon but without the lemon taste. You just sprinkle a little of the powder on the fruit.
If you use a tiny bit of lemon juice it won't taste Like lemon it's the acid that will stop from turning brown same with apples apples nd avocados potatoes all that sort of thing. If she is making a fruit salad one lemon will coat it all and stop anything from turning
A group of us who used to do lunches for my daughters' old school would put baskets of cut apples on the table. To keep them from browning, we'd give 'em a quick bath in a mix of 1 part lemon juice to 3 parts water. It was still lemony enough to keep the apple wedges from browning but the water diluted it enough to keep the apples from tasting like lemon. Never tried it with bananas but it might help.
I use pineapple juice, too.
I concur that Pineapple juice is what we always used.
