Fruit Salad with Custard.

Last week, it was the  Diwali Celebration at Aishwarya's school. All the Indian parents made a dish each to give a taste of India to the staff and teachers of the school. Since I had a hectic week even otherwise, I thought of making a "make ahead" dish. As I am desserts person, I opted for this one. This is something I could make blindfolded as we make this so often at home. My mom used to make this when I was a kid and I literally "grew up" having this!
This was well appreciated by everyone who had this at the feast and I had the recipe requests from many. So here is a quick, simple and healthy dessert for the holidays.
Ingredients:
Custard powder -4 Tbs (can substitute this with corn starch)
Milk -2 1/2cups
Fruits ( apples,grapes,oranges,pineapple, banana or any others of your liking)-1 cup
Lemon-1/2
Sugar- 5 Tbs
Vanilla extract -1/2 tsp ( if using corn starch)
Jello-1 packet (You will only need half of the Jello for this quantity of fruit salad)
Method:
Mix the custard  powder or  cornstarch in 1/4 cup of cold milk. Bring the rest of the milk to a boil along with 4 table spoons of sugar. Take the milk away from the heat; add the custard mix. Cook this for about 5 minutes or till the custard  thickens. (For those of you who are using corn starch in place of the custard powder, add a little bit of yellow food color to give your custard the usual color and add the vanilla extract to this.) Refrigerate this for 5 hours or till evenly cold. Make Jello as per the directions on the pack but use 1/2 a cup less water so that the Jello can be cut into little pieces after it sets. Refrigerate this till it sets and cut into small pieces. Meanwhile cut the fruits into little bite sized pieces. Add 1 tablespoons of sugar along with juice of half a lemon and mix well and refrigerate this too. After 5 hrs or so mix the fruits  and jello along with custard and serve