How to Cut Fancy Fruit

Fruit cut in fancy shapes dresses up and adds color to platters.

You can transform an ordinary fruit platter or dessert into a gourmet dish by embellishing with fancy fruit garnishes. Fancy fruit garnishes give your foods aesthetic appeal, which you can use to dress up a dining table, buffet table or individual plates for seated meals. Fancy fruit is cut using a special technique in which the pieces of fruit are carved and shaped into intricate designs that almost look too good to eat. Does this Spark an idea?

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Strawberries
Paring knife
Cutting board
Medium cantaloupe
Large knife
Spoon
Seedless watermelon
Heart-shaped cookie cutter
Pineapple
Wooden skewers

Instructions

Strawberry Roses
- 1
  
  Trim off the hulls of your whole strawberries. Discard the hulls.
- 2
  
  Place the strawberry on the cutting board, with the hull side down. The strawberry should be able to stand up, with the point of the strawberry up.
- 3
  
  Carve four vertical slits, of equal size, around the strawberry with your paring knife. The slits will form triangle shapes around the edges of the strawberry, these triangles should be thin so that they can easily be peeled back. Leave the center of the strawberry intact. Stop the cut before it goes through the end of the strawberry.
- 4
  
  Peel the four triangles back away from the center of the strawberry. When you fan out the strawberry, the fruit begins to look like the petals of a rose. Place the strawberry rose on a plate with the petals facing up.
Cantaloupe Bowls
- 5
  
  Cut the cantaloupe in half with a large knife. Spoon out the seeds.
- 6
  
  Use a paring knife to carve the edges of the cantaloupe by the rind, creating a trim around the fruit. You can make sharp jagged edges, like small triangles, or smooth and scalloped waves with the paring knife.
- 7
  
  Fill the center of your cantaloupe bowl with ice cream or cottage cheese. Or, scoop the center out and fill it with fruit to make a cantaloupe fruit basket.
Watermelon Hearts
- 8
  
  Carve your watermelon and slice it into 1/2-inch slices. Remove the rind and discard.
- 9
  
  Press a heart-shaped cookie cutter into the watermelon slices to make small watermelon hearts.
- 10
  
  Slice a slit into the bottom of the heart. The slit length depends on how large the cookie cutter is, but should be about 1/4 to 1/3 of the height of the watermelon heart. Place the watermelon hearts on the rim of a cup to garnish a gourmet beverage.
Pineapple Stars
- 11
  
  Carve your pineapple and remove the rind from the cylinder of fruit in the center.
- 12
  
  Slice the pineapple flesh into thin slices. Keep the hard core of the pineapple intact. Use a paring knife to cut the shape of a star out of the pineapple slices.
- 13
  
  Use the first star to trace multiple stars out of your pineapple slices.
- 14
  
  Place the stars on skewers or serve them on a fruit platter.