DIY Edible Arrangement

I love being creative in the kitchen, especially with desserts!  For my co-worker's birthday this week, I had a bit of a challenge.  He doesn't eat a lot of sweets, so cookies, cakes, and whoopee-pies were out.  A few of us tossed around the idea of getting an edible arrangement, but once I saw the prices I knew I could do it for less!  This project totaled around $15 (including the mug, skewers... everything!).

Here are all the ingredients I used:

Grapes, cantaloupe, pineapple, clementines, strawberries, baking melts, wooden skewers, floral foam, floral tape (shown but not used), mug, and gift "grass."  Not shown in this picture are the cupcake liners and rainbow sprinkles I used.

First, I prepared all the fruit.  I pulled off all the grapes and washed them, balled the cantaloupe like a true baller, slice the pineapple and cut it into stars, peeled the celementines and got all the annoying hairs off of them, and washed and sliced the strawberries.

The baking melts are melting in my Little Dipper crock pot.  Also shown, cupcake liners and rainbow sprinkles.

Next I cut the skewers to varying heights and skewered all the "filler fruits" (grapes, celementines and cantaloupe.  Notice how I left some space at the top of a few of the skewers.

 

I dipped some of the pineapples and strawberries in the melted chocolate baking bits and sprinkled a few with the rainbow sprinkles.  I set them on parchment paper and let them sit in the fridge for about an hour.

To size the floral foam to fit in the mug, I placed the mug on top of a block and pressed down to create an imprint of the mug size.  I used a serrated knife to cut the block to shape, and pressed it into the mug.

Finally the fun part!  I filled the mug to the brim with the green "grass" and added all of the filler fruit skewers.  I put the chocolate dipped fruit on top of a few skewers, and added cupcake liners around the pineapple stars for some (more!) color.  I kept the arrangement in my fridge overnight, and it still looked amazing the next morning.

This project was super easy and came out awesome.  My co-worker was happy to find it on his desk, and everyone thought I bought it - they were surprised to find out I made it!  I will definitely make more of these in the future, it was really so easy!  I hope this tutorial was helpful if you're thinking about making an arrangement!