How to Make A Beautiful Fruit Tray
Watch me make this beautiful fruit tray from start to finish!
Set a luscious, gorgeously arranged fruit tray on the table and it has the power to steal the show! I love fruit trays, especially when they are bright, colorful, and a little over the top. Arranging a fruit tray comes easy for some, but if you’re like me, it doesn’t at all! I use to hate doing fruit trays. For some reason, my creativity fails me when I’m expected to take a bunch of fruit and make something pretty out of it. I use to just resort to chopping it all up and placing it in rows on a platter.
I just love the way these pineapples look!
I threw a baby shower for my cousin a few years ago and decided it was time that I learned a pattern for a fruit tray and stuck with it. I hit up google for photos of fruit trays for inspiration and drew out my design on paper first (which I highly recommend instead of just winging a new design). Once I had it designed I loved it and I have never strayed from the pattern since. It’s simple, easy, and I can change things up whenever I feel the need without the pressure of having to come up with a whole new design.
The pattern is simple really. Create an “X” on the platter with pineapple boats and fill the empty spaces with fruit patterns and garnish with a crapload of flowers so it looks like I know what I’m doing. Works every time and the crowd goes wild.
Here is a warning though, once people find out that you actually made this fruit platter get ready for the requests to start pouring in. You may very well become the “fruit tray” person for every party if you’re not careful. Just send them the link to this post and tell them to make it themselves! It’s so easy.
Flowers make all the difference! So cheery!
Try creating your own fruit platter design or just follow along with me while I show you how to create a super easy fresh fruit platter fit for weddings, brunches, baby showers, you name it!
There are a few handy dandy rules that I use when creating my fruit platters:
- Use a slightly smaller platter with a lip- You want the fruit to look bountiful and overflowing. I usually go for rectangle or circle platters. Having lip on the platter holds in all those fruit juices.
- Use fruit that is in season- There is nothing worse than having a gorgeous fruit platter that tastes icky. Fall & winter fruit trays can be just as pretty and spring and summer fruit trays.
- Do all the fruit dicing first, clean up the mess, and then do the arranging. It’s not fun trying to arrange while you’re cutting. Dicing fruit can be super juicy and sticky and it’s much better to work on a clean surface. I clean up after I cut every fruit.
- Use FLOWERS and foliage!! Fresh flowers have the ability to take a blah fruit tray to something breathtaking! It’s a little tip a wedding planner gave me once and she has never lied! It makes all the difference in the world. Also the table or cutting board your fruit tray is on needs to be decorated as well with flowers. It really makes it look breathtaking! A fruit platter set on a bed of fresh-cut blooms is so pretty!
I always place my fruit platter on a cutting board and decorate the board as well.
Choosing flowers for a fruit tray: When choosing what flowers to use for your fruit tray stick with safe flowers that are ok if eaten and are pesticide-free. Now, nobody is gonna be eating these flower they are just for garnishing (or at least I’d hope not) but if they do, you want to make sure they’re not going to fall over and “get dead” (as my brother calls it) from some poisonous bloom. I like to use flowers like marigolds, pansies, and roses to name a few. They come in all kinds of colors which is great. Or you can just go to your local nursery and tell them you want flowers that are safe for a food display. They will gladly point you in the right direction and you can choose colors to go with your theme. Note: Some of the flowers I used in the video are not recommended. I created this fruit tray for video purposes only so as soon as I was done taking pics of the tray, the flowers came off and the fruit went into a container.
Get the Recipe: How to make a beautiful fruit tray
Ingredients
- 1 pineapple
- 1 small watermelon
- 1 cantaloupe
- 1 honey dew melon
- blueberries
- red grapes
- fresh florals, (food safe and edible)
Instructions
- Make sure all fruit has been washed and scrubbed cleaned.
- Cut the pineapple in half and then in fourths. Leave the stem intact so that each section still has stem on it.
- Cut the pineapple flesh from the skin.
- Dice the pineapple flesh into 1/2 inch or smaller sized triangles and arrange the triangles back onto the skin. Set aside.
- Cut the watermelon in half. Cut each half into fourths. Remove flesh from rind. Slice the watermelon into even, 1/2 inch triangles. Set aside.
- Slice the cantaloupe in half. Discard the seeds. Cut into fourths and remove the flesh from the rind. Dice into small, uniform cubes.
- Repeat the above step with the honeydew melon. Set aside.
- ASSEMBLY TIME!
- Place the 4 pineapple boats on each corner of the platter so that it creates empty sections. The steam should be hanging over the edge of the platter.
- On the shorter ends of the platter, arrange the watermelon slices along the outter edge.
- Next add a row of diced cantaloupe and honeydew melon.
- Placed blueberries in the corners to fill in any gaps.
- On the longer ends of the platter, place a row of catelope and honeydew melon until all gaps are filled in.
- Add blueberries along the sides.
- In the center of the platter, place a vine of cascading grapes. This will fill in the center space.
- Add flowers in the center and along the edges of the platter.
- Also add flowers on the table or board the fruit tray will be on.
- Cover with plastic wrap until ready to serve.
Video
Notes
Fresh flowers add that romantic, exotic affect so use them..a lot!
Use whatever fruit tickles your fancy! These are just my favs!
Keep a wet washcloth and dry towel handy. Cutting fruit is messy!
Thanks so much for this excellent display of knowledge. I have a 4th of July event this weekend. The video is truly awesome and I love the finished product.
Bobbi
I used your design method to prepare a fruit tray for 30 people. It turned out beautiful even though I didn’t add any flowers. It was the perfect amount of fruit, with very little left over. It was a side dish to a meal of burgers, potato salad, and a few other side dishes; in addition to a few appetizers and a dessert. I just estimated about a half cup of fruit per person.
No one ever answered the 2 questions about how many this fruit tray will serve. I too am going to make this for a wedding on Sept. 5,2014. Serving size given with a recipe is very important and should always be included in the information. I’m looking at about 180 people to serve this to.
Beautiful.When I first seen the picture of the platter I thought it would be difficult. Thanks for the video it makes it look a lot easier. You are such a talented person. Please keep up the good work.
Beautiful does not give justice to this fruit display. It is gorgeous and I can’t believe how simple it is to make. If I wouldn’t have seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it.
So are you leaving the core in the middle of pineapple or do you cut it out?
Cut it out