How to Make Bionicos (Mexican Fruit Bowls)

By Dennis Linden

This month’s staff recipe is both a refreshingly sweet fruit snack as well as a fond memory for Adriana Cadenas, a longtime veteran in Melissa’s Wholesale Shipping Department. Bionicos is a refreshing and sweet dessert made with an assortment of fresh fruit, a sweet cream sauce, and lots of toppings that originated in the city of Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico, in the early 1990s. While this dish has plenty of flexibility as far as choice of fruit varieties used, the difference between a Bionicos and a fruit salad, for instance, is in the presentation. Depending upon the size of each serving bowl, the chosen fruits are presented in separate sections like spokes on a wheel, usually with some kind of berry placed in the center as the hub of the dish. 

“Bionicos (as we know it in Mexico) is a popular snack for us that reminds me of visiting Mexico with my family as a child and stopping for one from a street vendor while sightseeing,” recalled Adriana. “This dish is also a great way to eat more fresh fruit. My taste twist is using a condensed milk and yogurt mixture instead of the traditional and much sweeter crema.  Simple to make and so delicious that, in summertime, this dish is the GO-TO snack for us girls who work here in the Shipping Office. After all, we are never short of fresh fruit ingredient choices!”
 
One of the simplest recipes ever submitted to this blog…as well as one of the most fun to make and tastiest! All the 5-star, Michelin-approved, exotic ingredients and creative techniques from the professional kitchens of the world will always have a hard time competing with the naturally vibrant colors and simple honest flavors of simply prepared fresh fruits. For this recipe, as is tradition, each fruit is laid out in the bowl as if on a painter’s palette, just waiting to be combined into different colors of flavor supported both by creamy and crunchy toppings. 

After a bit of research on the usual ingredients for this dish, I can attest to Adriana’s tweak of condensed milk over crema. However, since I had no appreciation of what that original tasted like, I decided to first try her recipe with a batch of homemade crema, an overnight process. I guess the Mexican culture is as addicted to sweetness on even fresh fruit, just like this country! The crema was way too sweet and overpowering to my palate. It also hits a culinary nerve of ruining the natural sweetness and varietal characteristics of each fruit by altering the flavor with an unnecessary sweetener. At least the yogurt adds an interesting and competing tartness to both the condensed milk as well as each fruit that is pleasant and pairs nicely without overwhelming. Almost any combination of fruit will work, though fruit choices should be based on presenting a variety of colors, textures and flavor combinations.

Like many other long-time staff members in the Melissa’s family, Adriana Cadenas has been a part of the team for almost 28 years, overseeing one of the most critical departments in the wholesale distribution process. That is, all the work of our diligent sales force which includes grooming relationships based on trust and efficiency, can be lost to an order not filled correctly or loaded on a truck. It’s a very competitive marketplace and buyers are just too busy to revisit purchases already done for one reason or another. Adriana’s day is filled with details, and if it were not, the company would soon lose its credibility. So, the goal of Adriana’s every day is to be invisible. Invisible and thankless – if not, then if something was left off an order or claimed to be missing —then all eyes look to the shipping department for answers. If a truck comes in, loads, leaves and arrives at its destination with no quality or manifest issues, then there are no kudos. Twenty-eight years of keeping it all straight kind of says it all to Adriana’s singular focus on invisible perfection, so to speak.
 
“My position here in the Shipping Office keeps me busy since it is a very hands-on, ever-moving place. I oversee the Wholesale Shipping Office, which is where all the paperwork for all the orders shipped to stores, both local and national, that have bought our products come to get filled and finalized,” Adriana explained. “The process must be fast-paced yet accurate to the package. Working closely with the order pullers on assembling and processing each order, it is my responsibility to make sure that the paperwork matches the product being shipped out. The challenge of supplying so many different stores, from my perspective, is that each operates on a different system of how paperwork is received and processed. It’s just another fun detail to get right, and it makes for a very busy day, but I really enjoy the challenge of it all.”

When away from the office, it seems that setting goals continues to be a part of Adriana’s nature. Since she loves travel, football and specifically the Green Bay Packers, she and her partner are on their seventh year of visiting a different football stadium each season to support their team in person – only twenty-five left to go! At the other end of the spectrum, her favorite indoor “sport” is reading a good book; though for that, too, she has set a target of at least one book a month and was ahead of schedule by two at the time of writing this feature! When asked, Adriana was quick to name the famous person, living or from history, she would like to invite to her own table if she could:

“That’s easy and will be no surprise to the people who know me – it would have to be Frida Kahlo. She was a Mexican artist remembered for her self-portraits in bold, vibrant colors. She is celebrated in Mexico for her attention to Mexican and indigenous culture, as well as by feminists for her depiction of the female experience and form. She did not follow the accepted “woman’s proper behavior and role” in the 1920s. Instead, she spoke her mind and did not care what society felt about how she should look, dress or think. She was way advanced for her time, as well as a creative and very talented painter. I believe an evening with Frida would be very interesting.” 

And since this dish was created long after Frida’s time, she’d be sure to include it on the menu for that evening. She would have certainly been drawn to both the simplicity of design as well as its bold, natural colors. Back in the day, you would have probably gotten a valuable still-life in thanks for the meal! 

Bionicos
Serves 4

Ingredients

Topping mixes: 
#1 – Combine:
½ cup Melissa’s Clean Snax® Almond, crushed
½ cup Melissa’s Dried Coconut
½ cup raisins
#2 - Combine:
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk, or to taste
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Fruit Bowl:
1 cup Strawberries, sliced
2 medium Bananas, sliced into rounds
1 small Granny Smith apple, diced
1 cup Sapūrana Mango, diced
1 cup Cantaloupe, diced
1 cup Pineapple, diced

Preparation

Make both toppings: Thoroughly mix the crushed Clean Snax®, coconut and raisins in a small bowl; the yogurt, condensed milk, and vanilla in another. Set aside for final plating.

Prepare and place each fruit variety in separate bowls for easy assembly.

Place strawberries in the center of each serving bowl, then arrange each fruit in its own section around the berries.

Lastly, sprinkle each bowl generously with the Snax mixture, then drizzle with the yogurt topping.