Make a Beautiful Fruit Bouquet that Looks (and Is!) Good Enough to Eat

Have your centerpiece and eat it too! In our post about Guiseppe Arcimboldo, we explored the creative ways in which he used fruits and vegetables to produce his fantastic portraits. Now, here’s another way to create art from fruit—with the added benefit that this one is actually edible. With this beautiful fruit bouquet, you can enjoy your centerpiece during dinner and then put out a chocolate dipping sauce (or whatever you like…) and dismantle it for a delicious and healthful dessert!

A fruit bouquet might also make a nice, light morning-after-Thanksgiving breakfast. However you choose to use it, it’s an attractive and fun way to get your daily servings of fruit (and for a fraction of the cost of what the professionals at Incredible Edibles charge!).

Here’s what you’ll need:

A container

This can be a basket, ceramic container or a vase. I would recommend something opaque (you don’t want to be able to see through it) with fairly high sides so that you have plenty of room to anchor your skewers of fruit (more on that later…). Make sure the container is food safe, washed and clean.

 A base

Either florist foam or a head (or heads, depending on the size of your arrangement) of iceberg lettuce. If you use florist foam, you’ll need to cover it with plastic so the foam doesn’t touch the food. I used a head of iceberg lettuce and it worked very well. Besides, in my opinion, that’s about the only thing iceberg lettuce is good for (although my daughter would disagree…)

A variety of fruits

I used grapes, a fresh pineapple, a honeydew melon, strawberries, and grapes. You might also want to try mangoes and other melons. Bananas and apples are not recommended as they will turn brown very quickly. Soft berries like raspberries probably won’t hold up well enough to be very successful either. Choose your fruits to include a variety of colors and textures. Or, depending on the occasion, you might want to stick with two-tone colors or even limit the bouquet to a single fruit.

Parsley or other greens as a garnish and to hide any skewers that are showing

Tools

You’ll need a cutting board, bamboo skewers, kitchen knives, flower- and/or leaf-shaped cookie cutters (or cardboard patterns to cut around), kitchen scissors, and a melon baller (if you have one—I didn’t)

Instructions

Note: Don’t make your fruit bouquet too far in advance as even these fruits will brown if left too long in the open air.

1. Cut your pineapple into ½” slices and use a cookie cutter (or cardboard pattern) to cut a flower shape out of each slice.
2. Use smaller cookie cutters or other patterns to cut smaller flower or leaf shapes from fruits such as melons and mangoes.
3. Cut spears from melons and mangoes as well, if you like.
4. If you have a melon baller, use it to scoop out balls to use as the centers of your pineapple flowers. You can also use whole strawberries, grapes, or smaller flowers cut from melons as flower centers (which is what I did).
5. Once you have cut out a good selection of shapes, you can begin assembling your bouquet. To start, put the base of either plastic-covered florist foam or iceberg lettuce in your container.
6. Take a bamboo skewer and stick six or seven grapes on it, pushing each one down farther with the next until you have just enough room for the flower at the top. Stick the pineapple flower on the skewer and then the fruit you are using for the center.
7. Continue making skewers in a similar fashion, but experimenting with different looks. For instance, you make want to make several skewers with only grapes. You may also want some with melon or mango spears or different types (or centers) for your flowers.
8. Once you have 10 or 12 skewers, begin arranging them in the base. In some cases, you may want to cut an inch or two off the bottom of the skewers so you have flowers of different heights in your bouquet.
9. As your bouquet comes together, you’ll see where you have holes to fill, so continue making fruit skewers of different styles and heights and adding them to your bouquet until you’ve created an arrangement you’re happy with.
10. Once all the fruit skewers are in place, tear off sprigs of parsley and fit them in and around the top of your container to hide the skewers and create a finished look.
11. If you like, you can dip some of the fruit in chocolate, add sprigs of mint, small toys in the shape of butterflies or other items. There’s no limit to the ways you can let your creative juices flow here…
12. You’re done! You have created a beautiful, edible arrangement. ENJOY!