Watermelon Flowers All Over the Place
So I’ve been watermelon crazy for a bit now, which is funny, because I don’t really care for watermelon (I’m more a berry type of girl), but I am really loving carving it! It’s actually a skill that doesn’t come easy to me and I really like the challenge of a completely new medium and working with a totally foreign tool (I don’t use knives much in my work). It’s been really fun to do potluck watermelons so far.
Yesterday our elementary school had an event for parent volunteers and asked us each to bring a dish for six people. I brought these little cups full of blackberries, grapes, watermelons, and golden honeydews (with blueberry middles), in the shape of flowers. Super easy to do and a little fun for the kids. I think they might be great for a fairy, garden, or butterfly themed birthday as well.
Instructions
- Using a melon baller, make watermelon balls (my baller has two sizes, I used the smaller one)
- Layer blackberries, grapes and watermelons on top.
- Use flower cutter to cut out flowers from honeydew melon. Err on the side of thicker slices/flowers.
- Using a skewer (or long toothpick), use the blunt side to skewer the flower and then stick it into the fruit. I used grapes to anchor the flower, since they were the firmest fruit in the cup.
- Cut a blueberry in half. You don’t need anything to stick them on, just place them in the middles… the suction of the berry and the melon is enough to keep them on.
- Cut a green grape in half and trim them so they have a leaf shape.
- Place grape “leaves” at the base of the stem, using other fruit to prop them up.
I had bought personal watermelons for this, and part of the melon was just big enough to fit in the middle compartment of this (dollar store!) platter. So I carved a small rose with some leaves. A note about personal watermelons: they seem to be quite soft and easy to carve… which is good and bad. Good because you don’t need a lot of pressure, bad because sometimes it’s quite easy to slip and cut something you don’t want to cut.
I *think* people liked them because they were gone in less than five minutes (or however long it took me to get my and the kiddos’ plates of food ready).
The watermelon below was actually one I bought just for practice. I wanted to see what I could do if I dedicated the time to carefully carve without the pressure of getting everyone ready to go to a party. It came out better than they previously had and I took time to learn how to really carve with some great tutorials on youtube.
The watermelon below is one I brought to our family’s Mother’s Day celebration. It was supposed to be a rose… but it went downhill fast right after I started carving the middle, so improvisation! It ended up a much easier daisy. It was my first attempt at a rose and when I found out it was a LOT harder than it looks. Not the worst design, though.
Happy carving!
For these projects I used:
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