How To Make A Fruit Bouquet

Welcome to my workshop on fruit bouquets!

One of my the best Valentine's gifts I ever got from my boyfriend was a bouquet of fruit. What could be better for someone who adores fruit than a beautiful basket full of cute flower renditions? I loved it, and your sweetie will too!

Making your own fruit bouquet is easier than it seems, and once you learn the tricks, you can duplicate it in a variety of styles. It's much cheaper than buying one premade, and it shows you care enough to get your hands sticky and personalize it.

1. To start, you are going to need a few supplies:

• Fruits of your choice such as pineapple, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, grapes, strawberries (select them ripe, but not overly soft)
• Semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted (optional)
• Parchment paper
• Curly-leaf kale
• Long wooden skewers (available at the grocery store)
• Cookie cutters in flower and heart shapes
• Melon-baller (if you want to make daisies)
• Nice sharp knife
• Large chunk of floral foam (available at crafts stores)
• Cute basket for holding your bouquet

Once you have all your supplies, you are well on your way to creating your own floral basket.

2. Next, you need to prep your fruit:

• Wash and pat dry the grapes
• Wash strawberries and cut the leaves off the top
• Cut the honeydew and cantaloupe in half and scoop out the seeds, then slice along the the rind to make half-moon shaped pieces
• Then, cut the half-moons through the middle, so they are shaped like leaves
• Run the melon baller along the inside of the cantaloupe and make a few orange balls for decoration
• Cut the bottom and top off the pineapple
• Slice off the sides of the pineapple, leaving the core intact
• Once the pineapple is bare, turn it on its side and slice it into circle pieces
• Dip a few strawberries in the melted chocolate and lay them to dry and set on the parchment paper (this is easier if you skewer them first)

Now that all the fruit is prepared, you are ready to skewer and then assemble into a bouquet.

3. Pretend the skewers are stems and turn your fruit into flowers

• Grapes are the easiest-- Pretend they are little flower globes. A popular idea is to skewer three or four at a time and bunch them together at the top of the skewer
• Strawberries can be skewered right at the top as well, so they look like a pretty little tulip
• Honeydew melon and cantaloupe take the shape of leaves in your arrangement. You want to skewer them so the point sticks up. Remember that with a heavy piece of fruit like this, you will need the skewer to go pretty far into the fruit.
• Use the pineapple as your open flowers by taking cookie cutters and cutting flowers out of the circles of pineapple. Then you'll want to poke them through the middle with the skewer so they face out.
• Then, push the pineapple flower a little further onto the skewer and poke the tip through a ball of melon. It's a perfect little daisy.
• You can experiment with more shapes using these basic design concepts.

4. Assemble the fruit flowers into a beautiful bouquet

Here's the fun part... putting it all together. Now that everything is prepped, you can use your eye to make the bouquet. Here are a few rules to keep in mind:

• Your floral foam goes into the basket of your choice, and the kale will cover it to look like leaves.
• Make sure to poke deep enough into the floral foam to hold the weight of your fruit
• It's easiest to start with one of your strawberry and pineapple "flowers" and work your way around, so that you have a balanced bouquet
• Your cantaloupe and honeydew "leaves" will always have the points facing upwards, just like real leaves
• There are usually more leaves closer to the bottom of the bouquet
• Grape accents are beautiful at the top of the fruit bouquet
• If you add your pineapple flowers last, they will always stand out better

And voila... your own version of the popular fruit bouquet, for a fraction of the cost, and with much more personality!

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