How to Prepare Fruit Trays

Fruit trays are a colorful and nutritious addition to the table.

Fruit trays make a great snack at parties and a tasty appetizer for almost any meal. They also make a wonderful dessert option for health-conscious eaters and add a lot of color to the table. Fruit is low in calories and provides essential vitamins. Almost anyone can make fruit trays from any type of fruit, and fruit trays are a wonderful way to get kids to eat healthy food. Add this to my Recipe Box.

Things You'll Need

• Several kinds of fruit
• Knife
• Small cookie cutters (optional)
• Large platter
• Lemon, orange or pineapple juice

Instructions

1. Choose a variety of fruit from the garden or store. Try to pick at least a few different colors of fruit to help make the tray colorful. Some people prefer to stick with a certain fruit theme, like tropical fruit or summer berries, while others happily mix together whatever different kinds of fruits they like.

2. Cut the fruit into bite-sized portions. Leave berries whole, and peel any fruits with non-edible peels, like bananas, oranges and mangoes.

3. Coat any cut fruit that browns with air exposure in an acidic fruit juice, like lemon, orange or pineapple juice. Apples, bananas and pears are especially prone to becoming an unattractive brown color when they sit in the open air.

4. Arrange the fruit on the tray in a creative way. Some arrangement ideas include rows or concentric rings of different colors of fruits or a specific design, like a flower pattern. Another idea is to arrange the fruit inside a hollowed-out cantaloupe or watermelon.

Tips & Warnings

• To make a tray even more decorative, cut some of the fruit slices into fun shapes with small cookie cutters.

• For dessert fruit trays, add some caramel and chocolate dip to the center of the tray to sweeten the dish.

References

• University of Nebraska at Lincoln Extension: 12 Tasty Salad Toppers

Resources

• Read this Article in UK English
• Food Network: Tropical Fruit Tray
• Food Network: Fruit Tray with Fruit Dip