Eat and Sip in the City

Today I have a fun Valentine’s Day idea for you all! Create your own Edible Arrangement.

Basically you need your favorite fruits on skewers displayed in a vase or jar, and voila, you have a tasty, healthy, and edible creation. Get out your strainer, a good knife and cutting board, and a couple of cookie cutters and you are good to go!

Ingredients and list of necessities:

Blueberries

Strawberries

Grapes

Cantaloupe

Pineapple

1-2 sizes of bamboo skewers

1-2 heart and star shapped cookie cutters (or any other shapes you prefer)

Jar, pot, or vase

*keep in mind you can totally mix and match your fruits and use more variety or less!

Directions:

First off, wash your berries and grapes. Also to make things easier, remove the grapes from the stems.

For the pineapple, don’t worry about cutting off the skin perfectly since we are going to be using the cookie cutters anyways! Just slice around the sides to get rid of the rough exterior and slice away.

Take each pineapple slice and use your cookie cutters  to make the shapes and set them aside for the skewer assembly.

Same with the cantaloupe. This too can be sliced up and shapes cut out.

Now it’s time for the fun part!  Gather all the prepared ingredients and items needed.

And then start skewering! Use different combinations to jam pack each skewer with lots of fruit. You do not need to fill them up all the way, keep in mind, since the bottom half won’t show!

To keep them sitting straight up in the jar, use grapes and blueberries as a filler. You could use candy or you could go to a local craft store or florist to get a non edible filler instead (if you are not using a clear vase).

Arrange it how you see fit and for Valentine’s Day or other holidays, you could jazz up the actual jar with ribbons around it or graphic tape or even write on it with paint pens to personalize it. But I kept it nice and simple and displayed it proudly next to my red candle and daisy for when the bf came over (don’t worry, the fake daisy got replaced with red roses from the bf! yay!).

Then something else happened. I had so many extra hearts and stars I decided to make extra skewers! And realized they are actually a great party or dessert idea on their own, beside the edible arrangement!

Then this also occured too.

Yup. The bf and I couldn’t resist melting up chocolate chips with a pat of butter (so it wouldn’t burn) and some milk to loosen it up.

And we dipped to our hearts desire!

We had lots of leftover fruit and chocolate. So I made these for him to take home and share with his family. Chocolate covered strawberries and chocolate dipped heart pineapples = best idea ever!

Make sure to keep all leftover fruit scraps (from the melon and pineapple) to make your own fruit salad the day after or to put in smoothies. Enjoy and happy almost V-Day!