We look forward to winter fruit salads all year — those grapefruit, oranges, and other citrus are in season and we can't get enough. But if you want to take your winter citrus salads to the next level, check out this smart, sweet tip from reader Marie-Eve.

Marie-Eve writes:

I live in Canada and we have been feeling the winter blues this week! In order to inject a bit of color and vitamin C into my life, I have turned to fresh fruit salad as an easy and healthy dessert, snack and breakfast. I have rejected the good ole' fruit salad (out of sight weird sugary cherries!) in favor of fresh pineapple, melon, mango, orange, blood orange, pink grapefruit and kiwi (also discovering in the process that I despise papaya, ick!).

Maybe it's too many acidic fruits or maybe it's some of the fruits being not fully ripe but sometimes the salad turns out a bit too sharp. I recently added real vanilla (scraping the seeds from half of a pod to a whole pod) to the fruit salad before I refrigerate it. The vanilla really cuts through the acidic taste and wakes the fruits perfectly, adding a sweet note without the use of any sugar!

Thanks so much for the tip, Marie-Eve. That looks so delicious!

Related: Making the Most of Vanilla Beans: Have You Tried This Tip?

(Images: Marie-Eve via The Kitchn's submission form)