How to Garnish a Fruit Tray

Garnishing a fruit tray increases its visual appeal. Though fruit comes in many colors, it's often cubed or balled into similar sized pieces for serving, causing the fruit tray to appear flat and uninteresting. Adding appropriate garnishes will increase its textural interest and add height and flavor enhancement that gives the fruit tray "the Wow factor." It just takes a few minutes more to arrange the fruit for maximum interest and garnish it for a special flair.

Things You'll Need

• Tray
• Plastic doily
• Pedestal bowl
• Stem of artificial grape leaf vine
• Prepared fruit
• Decorated cocktail skewers
• Lemons
• Oranges
• Limes
• Vegetable peeler
• Zester

Instructions

1. Cover the tray with a plastic doily that has be cut to fit to the inside of the tray, and leave a half inch of tray exposed.

2. Place a pedestal bowl on the tray. The bowl can be centered or offset, depending on your preference.

3. Wrap a stem of artificial grape leaf vine around the pedestal portion of the bowl.

4. Arrange the prepared fruit on the doily.

5. Fill the bowl of the pedestal bowl with decorated cocktail skewers.

6. Make lemon, orange and lime zest strips and curls and place them over and around the prepared fruit. To make zest strips, hold a vegetable peeler to the fruit peel, apply steady pressure to cut the zest (the colored portion of the peel) from the fruit in large strips and cut the strips into toothpick-like strips. To make zest curls, place the edge of a zester against the fruit and apply light pressure to remove thin curls of fruit zest from around the fruit.

Tips & Warnings

• If your pedestal bowl is large enough, you can place a smaller bowl, filled with cream or dip, inside of it, and then place the skewers between the two bowls.

• Chocolate curls or drizzle works well for garnishing fruit, also.

References

• Kraft Canada: Garnishing Techniques
• Essentially Healthy Foods: Garnishing
• Food Network: Fruit Tray with Fruit Dip Recipe