Salad Decoration :: Easy and Interesting Ideas

Salad Decorations and Fruit Carvings look fantastic as table centerpieces for parties. Edible flowers give a unique charm to the table and fruit animals add the fun element to the party. The guests are bound to appreciate your creativity and effort. Kids just love to be photographed with fruit animals like angry birds or owls. Chances are that they remember your decorations more than the food in the main course. Creative food presentation can also enhance the appetite of the guests. There are very simple tricks to make these eye pleasing decorations but you require lot of time and patience. The immense satisfaction one gets through this activity is the reward for all the patience.

All your require is ::

• Fresh vegetables and Fruits of good quality.
• A Sharp knife to manage the cuts (especially for the flowers)
• A set of toothpicks is very useful to put everything together

One can start with simple decorations like -

Vegetable Flowers :: It is fairly easy to make beautiful flowers like Roses, Lilies, Anthuriams with vegetables and fruits. The perfect vegetables for this purpose are Yellow & Red Capsicums, Spring Onions, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Potatoes, Carrots etc. The flowers can be arranged together in an attractive manner so that it looks a Flower pot or a Floral Bouquet.

Sharing some simple ideas for decorations with Vegetable Flowers ::

Flower Pot with Anthuriam Flowers :

I recently made these lovely Anthuriam flowers using Red and Yellow Capsicums. Baby Corn is perfect for making the spiky structure on the top of the flower. Madras Cucumber is used as a flower pot to hold the flowers. This huge cucumber can hold a large number of flowers, making it a perfect ingredient for a flower pot. You can use any other rounded vegetable or fruit for this purpose. Watermelon or Papaya is also a good option. I filled the empty space on the back with a couple of Tomato Flowers. Drum sticks are used as a stem for all these flowers. Spring Onions, used as leaves, give a nice volume to this arrangement. You can use toothpicks to attach the flower to the stem and also to insert the stem in the pot. I had some extra anthuriam flowers so made another small piece for the other end of the table. I used bottle gourd for the second one. This is generally always available at home and it is very easy to insert flowers in it.

Click here to read stepwise instructions to create Anthurium Flowers for garnish

Close up of the flower arrangement

Using Bottle gourd for a smaller pot

How to make Anthurium Flowers ?

If you are interested in making Anthurium flowers, follow these stepwise instructions.

Step 1 : Choose a Red or Yellow Capsicum of good quality. Using a black pen or marker, draw a heart shaped petal on it. Use a sharp knife to carve the anthurium petal on it and detach the petal slowly.

Step 2 : The carved petal should look like the photo below. Remove the unwanted flesh and seeds from the bottom part of the petal.

Step 3 : For the stem, cut a piece of drumstick of enough length. Insert a toothpick in this stem. Carefully insert the petal in this toothpick.

Step 4 : We require the babycorn to create the spiky structure at the top of the flower. Select a babycorn of appropriate size. Insert it into the toothpick. The flower should look like the photo below.

Attractive salad decorations with Spring Onion Flowers

Spring Onion flowers look awesome on a table centerpiece. The best part is that it does not require much time or effort for making them. They look great even if they don't turn out perfect. We can also use the green part of the vegetable to make fantastic curls.

Click here to read stepwise instructions to create Spring Onion Flowers for garnish

Sharing snaps of some decorations I tried recently

If you have small sized onions, you can make smaller flowers as shown in the picture below. Here I have arranged the flowers in a heart shaped glass dish along with the green part of the vegetable.

How to make Spring Onion Flowers ?

If you are interested in making Spring Onion flowers, follow these stepwise instructions.

Step 1 : For these flowers, select the ones with slightly greater bulb size. Wash the onions properly and then dry them using a cloth. Separate the green part of the spring onions so that only the white bulb with a small stem remains.

Also remove the top part of the white onion so that it becomes flat enough to give cuts.

Step 2 : Give long vertical cuts to the onion bulbs towards the green stem. Now give cuts perpendicular to the earlier ones.

Step 3 : Now keep these bulbs them in chilled water for atleast 15-20 minutes. We can add some ice cubes to the water for better effect. The chilling effect causes the petals to open up and the onions literally bloom like flowers.

How to make green onion curls ?

The green part of the spring onions can also be used in decorations. Select the green leaves of good quality. Trim the leaves, keeping enough length as required for the decoration. Give long vertical slits with the sharp knife. Place them in chilled water for 15-20 minutes.

I kept them in the refrigerator for faster result.The leaves take beautiful curls like this snap. If we take leaves of different length, we get lot of flexibility in arranging them. They look awesome with carrot or potato flowers.

How to make Cucumber Flower

Step 1 : Take a slightly big cucumber and cut it in to two pieces. Now take one of the pieces and trim it properly to get a flat surface on the top. Divide this piece in to 4 parts as shown in the snap.

Step 2 : Now further divide each part again into 2 equal parts. Thereby we will get 8 equal parts in total. We need to extend the cut vertically downwards so that the petals of the flower open properly.

Step 3 : We need to clean the central portion of this piece to create a hollow structure. This needs to be done carefully with the knife. The unwanted green portion can be gently removed from the top.

Step 4 : Now each of the parts needs to be shaped into a petal. An easy way to do this is actually draw the petals on the outer surface with a pen or marker. Then trim them as per the marked outline, using a sharp knife. The petals should finally look like this snap.

Step 5 : The next step is to create two rings of petals. Hold each petal in hand and divide it into 2 parts gently with a knife. Basically we have to separate the outer skin of the cucumber from the inner soft portion. If we insert the knife at the center and slide it slowly downwards, the skin starts separating automatically.

Step 6 : After we create the two layers, remove all unwanted flesh in between the layers. We can place the flower in chilled water for some time so that it opens properly. It should look like a full bloomed flower as shown below.

Step 7 : Now we need to create the center part (pistil) of the flower. We can use carrot or white onion for this purpose. Cut a slice of carrot and insert it in the hollow region we created at the center with the help of a toothpick.

Here is the completed White Lotus Flower. Hope you like it !

How to make capsicum Flower garnish

If we are in a hurry, we can make attractive flowers with capsicum. We can make 2 flowers from a single capsicum. I prefer red capsicum flowers for these ones.

Step 1 : Select a red capsicum of slightly bigger size. Give zig zag cuts across the center of it such that it splits into 2 parts, each having a curvy border.

Step 2 : Trim the petals with the knife and remove unwanted flesh from the center. Now hold each petal in hand and divide it into 2 gently using a knife. It should separate the outer skin properly to create an outer ring of petals.

Step 3 : Place the flower in chilled water for 15-20 minutes. This will make it open nicely.

Salad Platter with Cucumber & Potato Flowers

We can make an attractive salad platter by arranging the vegetable flowers in circles. It is very easy to make roses with potato. You have to cut thin slices of potato and color them with an edible color. Red roses look awesome on a Salad Platter so I chose red color. Apply the food color to each slice individually and assemble them together with a toothpick to form a rose. Cucumber flowers are made by making 2 layers of cuts with the special salad knife. Cutting the outer layer which separates out the covering of the cucumber from the inside part is very crucial and requires practice.

Making a Floral Bouquet

A floral bouquet of vegetable flowers is very eye pleasing. We can simply arrange the flowers in a dish to make it look like a bouquet. First we need to choose something for the leaves. I have chosen spring onion leaves but lettuce leaves also look good. Cut the vegetables properly to make them look like leaves and then place them more towards both the sides. Place the flowers over them to a couple of layers. Finally it should take the shape of a bouquet.

Couple Holding umbrellas - Made of Capsicum, Spring Onion

We had a party at our house and I wanted to try a different decoration this time. It was raining heavily outside so I picked up the the monsoon theme. Capsicum is the obvious choice for umbrellas and they are supported by toothpicks from inside. The faces are made of spring onions (watch the tiny pony on the head of the female). I think they looking cute.

Fruit Owl Bowl - Made of Watermelon and Pineapple

A Fruit Owl can be made in different ways. We can make it with just pineapple or with a combination of water melon and pineapple. Green apples or Custard apples can also be used for a smaller owl. The wings and eyes are important features so we need to make them perfectly. I tried with a watermelon as the base and attached wings of the outer covering of pineapple. I carved the front side of the watermelon to create a hollow structure. This can be used as a fruit bowl to keep a variety of fruits. This is a just a sample one so I used a smaller watermelon but with big sized melons, you will have ample space to hold lot of fruits. To create the wings, I split the pineapple into 2 parts vertically. Then I carefully separated the side parts and cut them in the shape of wings. The wings have to be fixed to the body using lot of toothpicks. Eyes are made of thin orange and raddish slices. Black grapes would have been ideal for the black part of the eye but I did not have them so I just gave black dots with a marker. Capsicum is the best choice for the feet.

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