You know how much I love a good fruit and veggie tray. Whether I am making one for a holiday party or for an after-school snack, fun fruit trays, and fun vegetable platters are a great way to get kids eating healthy snacks (and me too). So, when I picked up a bouquet of sunflowers recently I felt inspired to make a sweet sunflower fruit tray.
Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.
Yep, I was walking through the farmers' market and there was a display of hundreds of sunflowers. All bundled into bouquets. I couldn't resist buying a bouquet and bringing it home. We were having family over for a barbecue that weekend and I decided to use the sunflowers as inspiration for a fruit tray.
How to Make a Sunflower Fruit Tray
2 mangoes
1 cup of sliced pineapple
1 cup of cantaloupe
1 pint of blueberries
lavender flowers
paring knife
Start by finding a large platter to build your fruit tray on. I have a large wooden cutting board that I only use for fruit and vegetable trays. It is large enough to make all kinds of fun designs. In this case, the sunflower will fit perfectly on this tray. You will also need a nice bowl. The bowl will represent the middle of the sunflower. I could have chosen a larger bowl, but I like the size of this one. Use a larger one if you'd like.
Now it's time to build all the spikey mango petals. For this, I used a sharp paring knife to remove the skin from the mango. Then I used the knife to slice along the mango pit and create large slices of mango. I then sliced those into petals. Again, I referred to the actual sunflowers and wanted to capture how many pointed petals there are around the face of the flower.
Fan the mango slices in a circle around the board. I placed the bowl in the center of the board, to give me a guideline of how large I could build the actual flower.
Then I filled the center bowl with blueberries. The blueberries are the perfect center of the sunflower.
With the rim of mango in place, I wanted to take advantage of all the summer yellow fruit we have available right now. So, I added triangles of pineapple and cantaloupe. My kids love pineapple and cantaloupe, so I knew this tray would be very popular.
Finally, I wanted to add some "leaves" to the flower. So, I poked in a few sprigs of lavender to act as leaves for the sunflower. They added a lovely aroma to the entire board and they are edible too. It's important to only add edible items to your fun fruit trays.
How to Serve a Sunflower Fruit Tray
Once the sunflower fruit platter was complete I wanted to find a delicious way for it to be enjoyed. So, I brought the tray out as part of our dessert. Each person was given a bowl of vanilla ice cream and then could pull fruit from the tray to pile on top of their ice cream. We even sprinkled the lavender on top. Then I had a bowl of honey available for everyone to drizzle over the fruit sundaes. They turned out perfectly...but, I didn't have a chance to snap a picture. We were too busy enjoying the fresh fruit.
How long will a Sunflower Fruit Tray last?
It is best to make and eat fresh fruit trays on the day they are made. You could cut the fruit the day before and store each fruit in separate air-tight containers in the fridge. Once you assemble the fruit tray, if you need to wrap it with plastic wrap store it in the fridge until you are ready to serve.
Our sunflower fruit tray was a hit with kids and adults, everyone loves fresh fruit in a fun design! What design of fruit tray or vegetable tray should we make next?!
Make a batch of our favorite healthy fruit dip to serve with the sunflower fruit tray!
Make sure you are following along...
FOLLOW KITCHEN COUNTER CHRONICLES ON
SUBSCRIBE TO KITCHEN COUNTER CHRONICLES TO HAVE OUR DELICIOUS RECIPES, FUN CRAFTS & ACTIVITIES DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX.
