Make your own fruit tray with a few simple cutting techniques.
You can bring the magic of a beautifully displayed fruit tray into your home for a graduation party, birthday party or any entertaining event where you'd like to do more with your fruit than merely eat it. A few simple tips will make your fruit tray look so good that guests will find it irresistible--and yet so attractive that they won't want to eat it for fear of destroying the display. Add this to my Recipe Box.
Instructions
1. Pare the rind from a melon by slicing off the top and bottom of the melon with a large cutting knife so that it stands flat. Strip off the remaining melon rind moving from the top to the bottom of the melon with your knife so that slender, rectangular strips of rind are removed until all the rind is off the melon.
2. Cut the melon in half and then into quarters using the large cutting knife. Repeat this process on all your melons--honeydew and cantaloupe work well. Cut the quarters into 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch thick slices. Apply steps one and two to the pineapple, apples and oranges.
3. Cut ridges in your melon, orange, apple and pineapple slices with a channeling knife that has a V-shaped chisel. Push the knife away from you and downward into the fruit. Apply even pressure to maintain a consistent depth of about 1/4 inch. The knife will leave a pleasing, ridge cut in the fruit. Set the cut fruit aside.
4. Use a paring knife to remove the rind from about a dozen kiwi. Cut the peeled kiwi into slices that are 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch thick. Wash strawberries and cut the tops off of them with your paring knife. Wash the blueberries. Set aside.
5. Spread two layers of the sliced melon in a ring or half-circle onto a black, circular tray. Lay the sliced apples next, followed by a ring of kiwi fruit. Lay the orange slices in the center. Arrange the pineapple slices along the outer edge of the unfilled portion of the tray. Lay strawberries down next.
6. Lay a table runner or clean, white tablecloth over the table where the fruit will be displayed. Set the tray down carefully on the table. Lay blueberries along the outermost rim of the tray. If desired, you can garnish the tray with violets interspersed in eighths along the outer rim of the tray.
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