Fruit bouquet

I was recently inspired by Edible Arrangements to do a little fruit art of my own. This was a super fun, although time consuming process. A few people have asked about it - so here's the step-by-step.

Start with a flower pot and some floral foam:

For about 50 skewers of fruit, I used a pineapple, a cantaloupe, one green apple, a small bunch of red grapes, and 2 pounds of strawberries.

I cut some cantaloupe wedges to look similar to apple slices and skewered them from the tip into the heart of each slice:

Grapes were stacked three to a skewer:

The pineapple was cut using a flower-shaped cookie cutter. I had to use a small piece of melon rind to secure the pineapple flower so it didn't slide down the skewer. Alternatively, you can cut your pineapple so that the core (which is firmer) is in the center of the flower and skewer it that way:

Place a ball of melon on top after skewering on the pineapple flower. You'll want to use skewers of varying lengths to create the bouquet effect.

Getting started:

The strawberries were easy - just stick a skewer in through the stem until it doesn't quite push out the tip.

Any of the fruit can be dipped in chocolate, but this is more time consuming. I would budget 1 to 2 hours for a regular fruit bouquet and 2-3 hours for one with a lot of chocolate dipped fruit. The ingredients will run around $15 to $20. But they sell for $60 to $100 to if you enjoy the effort, it's a great money-saver! I think this would be a fun project to do with a friend.

Just pack as many in there as the floral foam will hold!

The chocolate dipped version:

To finish off, use some parsley to fill in the gaps and cover up the sticks a little bit.