Things I'm Giving To My Teacher:

A Bouquet Of Origami Flowers
http://www.origami-flower.org/howto-origami-flower.php

A Candy Bar Poster

Homemade Chocolate

An Edible Basket
Now there are different ways to make an Edible Fruit Basket or a Fruit Bouquet, here are some of the ideas I'm putting together to make one:
***** Instructions ***** Depending on the size of bouquet that you wish to make, you will need fresh pineapple, strawberries, cantaloupe, grapes, and parsely. For the bouquet shown here, I used 1 large pineapple, 2 pounds of strawberries, 1 cantaloupe, 50 grapes and a handful of parsley. 

You will also need a few other items to make this edible fruit bouquet: a flower cookie cutter, a knife, a melon baller, kitchen scissors, bamboo skewers, a cutting board, a vase, and some floral foam or playdough (the floral foam is easier to work with, but the playdough works just fine also - click here for a homemade playdough recipe ).

Step 1. Using your knife, cut up your pineapple into 1/2 inch thick slices. (I used 5 slices total for this bouquet, but you can use more or less).

Step 2. Using the cookie cutter, press each slice of pineapple and cut out a flower of pineapple.

Step 3. Using the melon baller, scoop out one ball of cantaloupe for every 2 pineapple flowers. Cut the cantaloupe ball in half and lay the flat side of one half against one pineapple flower.

Step 4. Now take each pineapple flower and stick a bamboo skewer through the center. Make sure your skewer pokes through the pineapple about 1/2 inch. Now stick that part of the skewer onto a cantaloupe ball, but don't let the skewer stick out the other end of the cantaloupe ball. Do this for each pineapple flower that you have.

Step 5. Wash your strawberries (you can remove the strawberry leaves if you want). Then take each strawberry and stick a bamboo skewer into the top of it, but don't let the skewer poke out the other side.

Step 6. Take a bamboo skewer and stick it through about 6-7 grapes. When you stick one grape on, slide it down to make room for the next one. Repeat this until your last grape. Make sure that the skewer doesn't stick out of the last grape (the one on top). Then slide each grape up the skewer until they touch the grape just above it. I made 7 of these grape skewers for this fruit bouquet.

Step 7. Put your floral foam or playdough into your vase (click here forhomemade playdough instructions ). I used a baby elephant vase here, but you can use a flower vase, a basket or something else. I do recommend using an opaque vase so the skewers & playdough are not visible through the vase. I used playdough for this fruit bouquet.

Step 8. Now you should have all of your fruit on skewers. Place each skewer into the playdough at various angles. You will want to create a spherical shape to the bouquet, so place the outermost skewers on a large angle and make them shorter than the center skewers. I had to break a few inches off some of the skewers to get them to the right height (I used kitchen scissors to help me break the skewers). This step is the most time consuming because you want the bouquet to look perfect. If you have trouble, just start putting in skewers into the playdough. Then adjust each one to look how you want it. The key to this step is to adjust your skewer lengths. Don't be afraid to break a good part of the skewer off (if you break too much off, you can always use a new skewer - I had a LOT of extra skewers at the end). Also, the playdough tends to get quite full of skewers, so if you place a skewer in and it runs into another skewer, twist it a little bit until it slides past the other skewer. Another key to making your fruit bouquet look AWESOME is to have plenty of fruit. Having too few fruit skewers makes your fruit bouquet look bare and skimpy.

By now, your fruit bouquet centerpiece will look something like this:

You could stop at this point and have a cute fruit bouquet, but I recommend you move on to Step 9.

Step 9. Once all your fruit skewers are placed, place some twigs of parsley in-between the skewers. This fills in the bouquet, hides the skewers and makes it look more like a flower bouquet.

Tip: You may have to remove a skewer and drop in the parsley from the top. This will give you a little more room to work with. After your parsley is in place, replace any skewers that you may have removed.

Once you have the parsley in place, YOU ARE DONE! You have a delicious and unique baby shower centerpiece. It will serve as a beautiful baby shower centerpiece and your guests will love the taste of this fresh edible fruit bouquet.

Place this fruit bouquet baby shower centerpiece on your food table or somewhere prominent. When you serve the refreshments, you could have the guests just pull the fruit off of the skewers, rather than pulling the whole skewer out. That way, the parsely won't be falling out all over.

You will need:

1 orange

2 red apples

1 green apple

1 apple for a base

some dark grapes

Toothpicks and bamboo sticks

Step 1. 

Prepare the following centerpices: 

orange lollypop - 5 pcs

apple flower - 4 pcs

apple leaf - 5 pcs

Orange lollypop, apple flower and leaf carved out of green apple

Step 2.

Set an apple on the pins. The apple will serve a base to fix the pieces on it.

The apple serves as a base

Step 3.

Fix the orange lollypops. Pin them into the apple.

Orange lollypops make the upper level of the fan

Step 4.

Fix the bamboo sticks with the apple flowers arranging them in a shape of fan.

The apple flowers make the medium level of the fruit fan

Step 5.

Add the apple leaves to the lower level.

The green apple leaves add some color to the fruit display

Step 6.

Fill the plate with fruits. 

Party fruit buffet is served!

Eat me!

This post is a contribution to Create n Carve ~ Veg Event April 2011. That Event is about to spread the word of fruit carving art all around the world.

Edible creations are beautiful and tasty edible arrangements that have become very popular these days. “Strawberry heart” is an easy to make edible arrangement that can be a unique handmade gift or a dessert centerpiece.

Materials used in this edible fruit arrangement: a heart-shaped glass bowl, Styrofoam, dressmaker’s pins, hard candy, fresh strawberries, toothpicks, plastic food wrap, red satin ribbon, sticky floral clay or hot glue, glue dots, scotch tape and tools.

Step 1. Take a heart-shaped container. It may be a heart-shaped glass bowl, a heart-shaped basket, etc. I used a heart-shaped glass bowl for this fruit and candy arrangement, which I bought for $1 in Wal-Mart.

Step 2.
a) Prepare Styrofoam disc or sheet, plastic food wrap, serrated knife, scotch tape, and scissors.

b) Trace the contour of your heart-shaped container on the Styrofoam. Cut the foam heart out using a serrated knife. Wrap the Styrofoam heart in clear plastic food wrap, securing it with pieces of scotch tape, in several places, on the bottom of the heart.

c) Secure the foam to the bottom of the container with sticky floral clay, double-sided tape, or hot glue.

Note: The foam should sit lower than the rim of the bowl.

Step 3. Prepare strawberry flavored candy and dressmaker’s pins. Using pins attach the candies, one piece at a time, along the inside edge of the bowl.

Note: Instead of hard candy you can use chocolates. For example, Hershey’s Nuggets Truffles (dark chocolate).

Insert a toothpick into the chocolate piece; do not let the toothpick poke out the other side. Then insert the chocolates along the inside edge of the bow. (Optionally, you can first insert a toothpick into the foam and then stick a chocolate truffle onto it).

Step 4. Add strawberries to the arrangement. First, wash and dry the strawberries; remove the strawberry leaves if you wish.

Fill up the remaining portion of the heart with strawberries. First, insert a toothpick into the foam and then stick a strawberry onto the toothpick; do not let the toothpick poke through the strawberry.

Step 5.
a) Attach a red ribbon (satin ribbon is the best choice; what ever ribbon you choose should not be transparent) along the outside of the bowl, using mini glue dots (which can be obtained at local craft stores) or glue in several places.

b) Then, make a bow as described here. Glue this bow over the seam in the ribbon.

Congratulations on your beautiful strawberry heart!

If you want to share your edible creations with others, email them to me. I'll be happy to post your edible centerpieces on my site.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please, warn your guests/family/anyone who is going to eat your arrangement that it contains sharp metal/wooden parts that can cause injury. Do not let children disassemble the arrangement without you.

Palms fruit dessert

To make this fruit dessert you will need: two bananas, two to three kiwis, and two tangerines or oranges.

This is a really easy and cute fruit dessert. It takes about 10 minutes to make. Wash and peel bananas, tangerines/oranges and kiwis. Cut your fruit into slices. Make Palms fruit display on a big flat plate. Use bananas to create palms’ trunks. Arrange kiwi slices to create palms’ leaves. Place the slices of tangerines beneath the palms.

Variant of this fruit dessert

Fruit Carving: Watermelon Flowering Garden.

Fruit carving

Materials used: one oblong seeded watermelon, one small yellow watermelon (or substitute mini red watermelon or pineapple), flower shape cookie cutters, melon baller, 15-20 Skewers for flower stems, 40-50 Popsicle or jumbo craft sticks for picket fence, toothpicks, hot glue gun, green food coloring and pipe cleaners (optional).

Step 1. Wash the watermelons. Cut a 1/4 inch slice off the bottom of the oblong watermelon to provide a stable base. Cut the top 1/3 off the watermelon lengthwise to provide the flower bed.

Step 2. Cut out flat pieces from the flesh of the slice and from flesh from the flower bed piece. Use cookie cutters (or free hand cut) for the desired shapes for flowers. Be sure to cut shapes from the yellow watermelon as well. (Shown are daisies and tulips.)

Step 3. Soak skewers in green food coloring, and set on paper towel to dry.

Step 4. Use a small melon baller to create flower centers from both the yellow and red watermelons. Assemble the flowers by attaching the center balls with toothpicks. Place entire flower head on tinted green skewers. Insert skewer flower stems into base flower bed. Be sure to alternate colors and feel free to experiment with other colorful fruits like cantaloupe or blueberries.

Step 5. Fill the basket flower bed with the rest of the fruit in flower shapes and balls. Shape a couple pipe cleaners into leaves and carefully attach to the skewer stems.

Step 6. Using extreme caution use a hot glue gun to attach the Popsicle sticks around the flower bed as shown to create a fence for the garden. Garnish with other fun shapes such as butterflies or honeybees.

Photo and directions courtesy of 

http://www.watermelon.org

Watermelon carving: Heart Fruit Basket

Almost any shape watermelon will work for this project.

Step 1. Cut a thin slice from the bottom to provide a stable base.

Step 2. Draw the outlines for the Heart Basket as best you can to mirror what is shown in the image.

Step 3. Use a knife or decorating tool to cut out the edges. Be careful not to cut through the handle.

Step 4. When cutting is complete, carefully remove the top quarter sections. Trim the flesh from the inside of the handle.

Step 5. You can cut out hearts or other designs from the rind you removed to decorate the outside of the basket; attach with toothpicks.

Step 6. Fill with approx. 8-12 cups of fruit salad.

Photo and directions courtesy of 

http://www.watermelon.org

"Gerberas" Edible Bouquet

To make this edible bouquet you will need: turnip, or rutabaga, or beetroot, a special carving knife, and a pair of scissors.

Homemade Edible Arrangement

ingredients:

1 pineapple

1 honeydew melon

1 cantaloupe

1 bag red grapes

1 pint strawberries

1 package Baker's melting chocolate

Vase, tin, or basket

Styrofoam half-dome or rectangle

Skewers + toothpicks

directions:

Start by getting all of your fruit ready. Cut the pineapple in slices lengthwise and use a flower cookie cutter to cut out shapes (I made 11 flowers). Cut the cantaloupe open and use a melon baller to make a dozen balls and use a knife to make a flat side on each one so they sit flat up against the pineapple. Use a toothpick cut in half to attach the melon ball to the pineapple flower. For the leaves, cut the honeydew melon in wedges.

Rinse your grapes. Rinse, cut, and dry the strawberries and melt chocolate according to package's instructions. Dip half of your strawberries in the chocolate and set on a wax-paper lined cookie sheet to allow the chocolate to set completely.

Start your arrangement by placing the pineapple stem in the middle, and then move out from there. Long skewers are good for the pineapple flowers and long stacks of grapes, and toothpicks were great for the honey dew wedges and smaller stacks of grapes. Keep working until you've got a nice rounded arrangement with no visible styrofoam. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve. I wouldn't recommend constructing it any more than 24 hours before you intend to serve it.

f you are poorish and have 35 minutes to spare, you might consider "disrupting" the all-powerful Edible Arrangement industry. As I did. End result: I saved $100 and wasted 35 minutes.

Step 1: Find an Edible Arrangement to steal.

By way of background: I am not actually planning to give my wife a fruit-salad-with-sticks for Valentine's Day. She loves me and I'm sure would feign appreciation, but that's a little sketchy, even for me. What I hoped to do instead was figure out if other suitors, perhaps ones with a stronger aesthetic sense than myself, could quickly and cheaply cobble together an Edible Arrangement simulacrum that would please even the most standoffish of partners.

So I went to the Edible Arrangements website and picked out a particularly spectacular offering. This one, the "Valentine's Day Bouquet (Large)" (which the image filename indicates is in other months called something to do with "Lovely Berries"). It retails for $129 and zero cents, and is comprised of pineapple hearts, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and little red grapes. It comes in what looks like a metal basket. And so, I had my shopping list.

Step 2: Buy the ingredients.

Our office is near Union Square in Manhattan, home to one of New York's many small bodegas. So I went to Whole Foods, because 1) it was easy, and 2) it seemed like I'd be spotting Edible Arrangements a bit of a head start on cost, given how generally expensive everything at Whole Foods tends to be.

I bought:

• 1.75 pounds of red grapes: $6.98
• A package of (non-organic) strawberries: $4.99
• Off-brand Nutella chocolate, because Whole Foods doesn't sell Nutella, which is weird?: $4.50
• A pineapple: $4.49
• Pointy sticks: $1.99

A quick note: I opted for a Nutella-type dip in lieu of the more typical melted-chocolate system that your more seasoned Edible Arrangement-types would use. This is one of the many Economies of Scale™ that Edible Arrangements no doubt enjoys and to which my experiment was not privy.

Anyway. Total cost? $23.12. Already over $100 off the Edible Arrangements price.

Whole Foods didn't sell a little metal red basket though. For that, I went to Pier1 Imports, where I got the closest thing they had: a little red mug. They didn't have that thick green foam that you use for floral arrangements, which seemed like the sort of thing you'd need in the bottom of your basket or bowl. So I got a little willow ball to use to hold the sticks. Total cost there? $7.56.

Meaning that all of the ingredients had a final cost of $30.68, for which I expect the Atlantic Media Company will have no issue in reimbursing me.

Step 3: Preparing the ingredients.

There were three things that needed to be readied prior to assembling the finished product: grapes-on-a-stick, chocolate-dipped and non-chocolate-dipped strawberries-on-a-stick, and pineapple-hearts-on-a-stick. I did these tasks in the time-honored "easiest to hardest" order.

Step 3a: Grapes on a stick.

Prep time: 3:23.

Take grapes out of the bag, put them on a stick. Done. (Tip: Probably you should wash the grapes? I didn't bother.)

Step 3b: Strawberries on a stick.

Prep time: 3:40.

Take strawberries out of the box, put them on a stick. Done.

Sort of. As it turns out! Dipping strawberries in faux-Nutella does not work, as a coworker delighted in telling me before and after I tried to do so. The strawberries already like to slide around on the little sticks; the dense stickiness of the Nutella means that you're not going to be able to pull it out successfully. Instead, I had to spread the Nutella on the strawberry with a knife, like a chump.

Happily I only had to do a few of those.

Step 3c: Pineapple hearts on a stick.

Prep time: 12:26.

Ha ha ha. Oh God.

So! We'll start at the ending. The best way to cut hearts out of pineapple is to cut horizontal slices of the pineapple, and then cut those slices into quarters, andthen to shape the little quarter-circles into hearts. Or, if you would like to enjoy an Efficiency of Scale™, you can get a particularly sharp heart-shaped cookie cutter, probably. That's what I would do if this was my actual job, which, thank God, it isn't.

Before I could learn this, though, I had to cut the sides off the pineapple. (Efficiency of Scale™: Use a bigger knife than I did.) At first I thought, Hey, why not just cut a heart in the side of this thing, so I tried that and it was embarrassing. Maybe you can see the little heart shape in the pineapple in the picture above, but probably not.

Then I figured out to do cross sections, but before hitting on the quadrants plan decided to just sort of wing it, making a heart from memory. This didn't work.

This is it, on a plate. That is a "heart."

Eventually, though, I ended up with a (semi-)respectable plate of pineapple hearts. If your preschooler drew a heart as heart-shaped as these, you'd probably be pretty impressed, if you're easily impressed.

Step 4: Assembly.

Total time: 17:40.

Everything about this process seems easier than it is, putting fruit in a cup included.

I dropped strawberries on the table (in the conference room at my workplace where my coworkers will at some point wonder, Why does this room smell like pineapple and why is there fake Nutella on this table?). I had to sort of guess how long the sticks needed to be to make an even sort-of-pretty arrangement. Efficiency™: Have pre-made stick lengths. I had to try and cram those sticks into the little holes of the weird willow ball which — being round! — didn't like to sit still in the bottom of the polished, rounded mug. At this point I will note that maybe I'm an idiot, so your mileage may vary.

I put the strawberries in first, since they're the biggest. Threw a little Nontella on a few of the berries. Put probably too many pineapple hearts in the mix. Added the grapesticks.

And then I was done.

Step 5: Analysis.

OK. So this cost me $30 or so, plus about 40 minutes of my time, which is worth another $5, I'd say. One of the nice things about a DIY Edible Arrangement is that you don't have any of the overhead cost of boxes or shipping or anything; you can make this in your kitchen and then wait until your significant other comes home to surprise them with it, and boy oh boy will they be surprised.

In the interest of complete fairness, I spoke with The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, who edits the website's business stories and who, speaking objectively, knows a little something about business and disruption and all that nonsense.

I presented my creation to Derek, and asked him to tell me how much he would pay for it. "Well," he said, talking something about ingredients and the philosophy of his imminent guess (really, he did this), "I think that I would pay …"

"Somewhere in the mid-$20s."

He and I are no longer friends.

Edible bouquets – Delphinium vegetable flowers

Edible Bouquets are not only beautiful, but tasty too. Instead of fresh flowers, try an arrangement of edible Delphinium flowers as a beautiful table decoration or as a garnish for your favorite dishes.

Happy food crafting!

To make these vegetable flowers you will need: Daikon or Oriental radish, white radish, carrot or turnip for center of a flower, a knife, and a pair of scissors.

Step 1. Peel the radish. Use the knife to cut a cylinder 2-3 inches long out of a peeled radish. Next, cut 5 pieces of radish off all around the cylinder so you have something closer to the cone. Look at the picture example to see how it’s done.

Step 2. In a cone, make 5 thin petals with a bit of thickening at the bottom.

Step 3. Cut some pulp from the ribs as shown in the picture. Then make a second row of petals in a checkered pattern regarding the first row.

Step 4. Remove the remaining pulp in the middle. Use scissors to make edges of each petal wavy. Place a flower in solution of pink, blue or violet food coloring for several minutes.

Step 5. Using a toothpick, secure a carrot or turnip ball in the center of the flower.

You edible flower is ready! You can use these veggie flowers as garnishes for salads or other dishes.

Or you can make an edible bouquet. Make about 20 delphinium veggie flowers securing them onto a stalk of rhubarb or celery with the same toothpicks you used for attaching pieces of a carrot/turnip.

Step 6. You can arrange a bouquet in a cute mug or vase using parsley leaves as foliage for your veggie bouquet.

Making Edible Bouquet – step 1. Take a big vegetable (turnip, beetroot, rutabaga) that has a somewhat of a flat shape. Cut off a top. Using a regular knife cut a slight conical cavity the middle.

Step 2. Using a special carving knife shown in the picture, make notches towards the center leaving a 0.4 in diameter circle in the middle as shown in the picture.

Step 3. Around the first row of notches make 2 more rows of notches. Then cut a little bit of vegetable flesh in a circle.

Step 4. Leaving the center untouched cut a thin slice in a circle in order to form the first row of a vegetable flower.

Step 5. Using a pair of scissors, make frequent notches from the end of the slice towards the center as shown in the picture. Give the flower petals a pointy shape.

Step 6. Remove a thin layer of the vegetable flesh under the first row of the petals.

Step 7. Cut a thin slice in a circle and make a second row of petals chequerwise with respect to the first row.

Step 8. Carefully cut the gerbera vegetable flower off from the rest of the vegetable. Using food coloring, make your veggie flowers the color you want them to be. Put some poppy seed or something similar in the middle of the flower.

Step 9. You can use the edible flowers to decorate any dish or you can make a Gerbera Edible Bouquet using 3-5 flowers. I recommend securing these gerbera flowers with strong silk flower stems as these vegetable flowers are pretty heavy.

Congratulations! Your beautiful edible bouquet is ready! Your guests will definitely appreciate your creative work!

Photo and directions of this edible bouquet courtesy of Margarita Kuznetsova "Vegetable Bouquets"

Fruit dessert with a pineapple lily

Follow steps below to make a pineapple lily for this fruit dessert