Carving and Creating an Edible Gourmet Fruit Basket: How to Do it at Home

A fruit bouquet is not only an edible work of art, it transforms fruit into an ultra sweet dessert that is not only a party conversation piece, but a natural and healthy delicious temptation. Fruit bouquets can be elegantly simple or exquisitely detailed, based on your patience and creativity. Fresh fruit bouquets resemble a floral arrangement from a window bouquet to a clay pot floral plant to a stout little flower bush. The depth, height, texture and arrangement are totally up to you and your edible artistic tastes.

Here are some tips and steps to creating your own beautiful fresh gourmet fruit basket similar to the expensive ones sold by the professionals.

First decide what fruits you want to use. Generally in season fruits are most cost effective. Then draw a simple pencil sketch of your desired arrangement from flowers to leaves. You can use two simple fruits for an entire bouquet, such as strawberries and honey dew to simulate flowers and leaves. Having at least 2 colors in your basket will provide enough contrast, to create a beautiful eye pleasing bouquet, however additional colors enhance the design. You will need the following tools to get started, toothpicks and wooden kebab sticks so you can have something to poke the fruit on to. You can get a package of wooden kebab sticks for a buck or two. You can also use decorator tootpicks or colored toothpicks for added touches of colors that peek through your bouquet. You will need an eggplant, which you will cut one side so it can lay flat. The eggplant will become the base that you poke the wood sticks into. You will need a sharp kitchen knife that you feel comfortable peeling, slicing and cutting fruit with. You will need some clean new tissue paper or colored food plastic wrap which will help fill the space between the holder and the actual arrangement.

Colorful plastic food wrap is available in your grocery store and works just like Saran wrap. If you have some plastic decorations from birthday cakes in the past, you can use those too. You will need a cutting board and a food-safe storage container that will act as your flower pot. I recommend visiting your local party store for something inexpensive and attractive that will work just fine, and can be disposable afterwards. You can also use a clean new glass vase or jar as the fruit bouquet holder. You just want to make sure it is wide enough to hold your desired size eggplant base. If you like, you can have assorted candy spearmint leaves to poke through as simulated leaves. They are edible and provide great texture and color.

The best fruits to use for making an edible fruit bouquet are green, red and black grapes, pineapple, melons, cherries, strawberries, kiwi and orange slices. They are stout enough to stay firm when poked and won't discolor like bananas or apples. Soft fruits such as blueberries and pears are just difficult to work with and get too messy.

Some fruits can stay whole, such as strawberries and grapes. Other fruits can be carved into shapes such as circles, or scooped melon balls or cubes. Pineapple is easy to carve into more detailed shapes. You can add a touch of parsley or celery stalks sliced thin lengthwise for added greenery. Simple cookie cutter shapes like hearts, stars and circles cut firm fruits such as kiwi and melon. You can use these shapes as a flower bade and poke a smaller rounded fruit through the middle as the center of the flower.

Place your cut eggplant inside your food container. At this point you can push down some new and colorful tissue paper or colorful food plastic wrap and allow some of it to free fall outside the container for dramatic effect. Green can make a nice touch to look like a bed of leaves or grass. Next, begin piercing the fruit to start your fruit bouquet arrangement. You want the fruit to be varying heights to look realistic, so some of your wooden kebab sticks will be pushed further down into the eggplant than others. You can pierce the candy spearmint mint leaves and fruit on the same wooden toothpick or kebab stick. You don't want to overdo the amount of leaves, because the colorful fruit flowers will need to take focus.

For ideas on the multitude of edible fresh bouquet arrangements that could be made just go to www.yahoo.com or www.google.com and enter the words "fresh fruit bouquet" and then click on the word images. There you can view hundreds of pictures of gorgeous fruit creations from daisies to roses to window box creations. A glance at a few pictures will have you confidant in creating your own unique design.

I would recommend first practicing by making a fresh fruit bouquet just for your family, to gain hands on experience. Then, the next time you can make one for a special occasion to bring to a holiday or festive gathering.

After putting together your fresh fruit bouquet, gently wrap it in food plastic wrap and tie it off with a piece of curled ribbon. Keep it refrigerated until read to serve.

Some other tips:

You can use cut cheeses to enhance your fresh fruit bouquet.

You can drizzle white chocolate on the bouquet for an extra sweet touch that resembles snow.

Small melon balls make good floral centers to a flower shaped pineapple that looks like a daisy.

Grapes pierced all the way along a kebab stick make great colorful design enhancements.

Watermelon makes lovely pink and red flowers.

You can use cookie cutters for melons and pineapple for precise shapes.

The most important thing is to have fun and remember your first attempt may not be perfect, but it will be easier than you think, and the food is edible, so nothing will be wasted.