Carving art: How to make vegetable flowers

Also great for a party!

Carving art: How to make vegetable flowers

Flat vegetable flowers are great for dressing up your bento to finish up. Put them on broccoli, on rice, on sandwiches, etc… anywhere you want. It adds a nice finishing touch and will definitely cutify your bento.

Carrot flower:
- Carrrot
- Cheese for #2 (optional)

[Carrot flower #1]
1. Slice a carrot and make upside down V-shape incision around the carrot.

2. If you don’t like eating carrot skin, you can cut the outside part.

[Carrot flower #2]
1. Slice a carrot, and use any flower shape cookie cutter to cut out the carrot. *You can just stop right here, and your carrot already looks much cuter than ordinary boring carrot like. (Check out the Path to Totoro Forest)

2. Use a straw to make holes on where petals are, and on the center.

Carrot flower #1 looks really adorable on broccoli. I usually use baby carrots for this, but you can just use the smaller part of a carrot. The secret weapon to make simple yet fancy-looking Carrot flower #2 is a straw! You can also make flowers out of cheese, apple, ham, anything that’s soft enough to make a hole with a straw. In the picture below, I made a flower with cheese, and swapped carrot bits & cheese bits.

If you don’t have a cookie cutter, don’t worry. You can make a Carrot flower #1, and use a straw to cut out holes. (like the one at the right bottom) If you have hard time getting a veggie piece out of a straw, just blow it out from the other end. I save carrot bits I get from cutting carrot with a straw. You can use them as eyes or cheeks (if you’re making animals or people), or just sprinkle them around in your bento!

A cookie cutter and a straw can make an ordinary carrot look pretty fancy!

Carrot tulip is more 3D, so you can stick it in the corner of your bento box like veggie sticks.
[Carrot tulip]
- carrot
- cucumber

1. Slice a cucumber about 3/4 inch thick, and cut it in half.
2. Cut out V-shape where seeds are.

3. Cut the carrot like a tulip.

This is what a tulip looks like in my head.

4. Stick toothpick through the cucumber and carrot, and done!

Also great for a party!

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Food gifts: Fruit Bunnies

These Fruit Bunnies are a healthy treat, with a few sweets on top! A wonderful, and colorful, spring time edible craft!

Ages: 5 and up 

Here's what you'll need for ONE Fruit Bunny...• An orange or apple
• 2 Candy fruit slices
• 3 Jelly beans 
• String cheese
• Toothpicks
• Knife
• 1 Mini Marshmallow
• 2 Peanut shaped candy (optional for Orange bunny) 

Here's how you make them...
1. Wash and dry your fruit. All of the bunny's features are attached to the fruit with toothpicks. It is easiest to insert the toothpick into the candy first then into the fruit. If your fruit is very hard it may help to make a hole in the fruit first with the toothpick before you attach the candy.
2. If you are making the orange bunny and want to attach some peanut candy bunny feet you will need to do that first. Attach each foot with a tooth pick into the bottom sides of your orange.3. Place two jelly bean eyes in the middle of your fruit. 

4. To make the whiskers you will need to cut a small, long rectangle from your string cheese (make it about as wide as your fruit). Then cut 3 'whisker' strips on each end of the rectangle, being careful not to cut all the way through. 

5. Push a pink jelly bean onto the end of a toothpick. Slide the string cheese whiskers onto the toothpick, pushing them up to the jelly bean nose. Push the toothpick into the fruit, underneath the eyes.6. Attach your fruit slice candy with toothpicks to the top of the fruit to make the bunny's ears.
7. Attach a mini marshmallow to the back of the fruit to make his bushy tail.

Food gifts: Fruit Bunnies

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Flower gifts: Edible Centerpiece, The Veggie Bouquet tutorial

Most of you have probably seen an edible bouquet before – usually of the fruit or cookie variety – but this particular design is definitely a stand-out!

The edible veggie bouquet pictured above is from Marley Majcher‘s 40th Birthday Party (more details coming soon) and serves as great inspiration for a super-stylish take on this idea… from the choice and arrangement of the veggies to the chic display in a simple glass cylinder vase filled with black lentils.

This would be an impressive addition to the appetizer buffet for everything from parties & showers to Mother’s Day brunch! Here’s another design that features skewered veggies spraying from a melon “basket” garnished with thyme:

I’m also loving the idea of doing “mini versions” of edible bouquets for guests in lieu of individual salads – and serving them in small terracotta pots with a side of veggie dip. I’m definitely going to play around with that idea soon… =)

And below is a video I found with some DIY info on creating edible bouquets… You do have to sit through a 30-second ad to get to the video, but once you get to it, there’s some good DIY info in there about 2 types of edible bouquets: one fruit version and one veggie version featuring clever “roses” make from asparagus and radishes.

How to Make Edible Bouquets

Flower gifts: Edible Centerpiece, The Veggie Bouquet tutorial

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Heart and Food gifts: Mini-Mozzarella Chicks & Cherry Tomato Skewers

 Carving duck and heart tutorial

A neat snack for your spring theme party or Easter celebration: mozzarella chicks marinated in curry and cherry tomatoes on a stick. Easy to make and it will sure impress kids or grown-up lovers of cute food. You can serve these skewers as a party snack, garnish salads with it, take them to a picnic or put them in a lunchbox.

I prepared these skewers before Easter but didn’t find time to post it until now, sorry :-P

There’s this gorgeous food blog called L’exquisit where I’ve seen these neat Italian lollies made with mini-mozzarella and cherry tomatoes. I really like the presentation and wanted to make something similar. In the end, it turned out to look quite different but oh well, the ingredients are still alike.

How to make Mozzarella Chicks & Cherry Tomato Skewers

• mini-mozzarella (if you can’t get your hands on this, you can probably replace it by scooping out balls from other cheeses like gouda, etc. Cube-shaped pieces might be nice as well. Or smash and mix feta with cream cheese to form little balls.)
• curry powder
• carrot
• black sesame
• cherry tomatoes (must be oval-shaped if you want to make hearts)

1. Marinate the mozzarella in a 1:3 curry-water mixture for about an hour, then rinse gently with cold water. Pierce mozzarella and cherry tomatoes with a skewer.

1. Cut out a triangle from a carrot like shown in the picture and then slice it thinly with a knife or mandolin slicer.

1. Slit the mozzarella a little and place 2 carrot triangles inside.

1. Pierce 2 holes with a toothpick and stick in 2 black sesame seed.

1. For making heart-shaped cherry tomatoes, refer to this post: http://eyecandy.nanakaze.net/?p=128

Heart and Food gifts: Mini-Mozzarella Chicks & Cherry Tomato Skewers

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Food gifts: funny crafts ideas, Crazy and Hilarious Vegetable Faces

 

Food gifts: funny crafts ideas, Crazy and Hilarious Vegetable Faces

In the late 1990s, there was the brief phenomenon of How Are You Peeling?, in which some guy realized that fruits and veggies sometimes look like faces when they unevenly spurt from the calyx of their flowers. Calendars and email forwards ensued.

You remember.
Then, Carl Kleiner, the mastermind behind those amazing photos of ingredients from the IKEA cookbook, decided to play with the above idea...but, you know, make it way better.

 

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Food gifts: Angry Birds in Our Lunch

Angry Birds in Our Lunch

 

 My kids often take packed lunches to school.   We wanted  to come up with some new and fun ideas, instead of taking the same old boring sandwich.  I asked my kids if they could come up with ideas on making Angry Bird treats before I went to the grocery store. We brainstormed for a bit, and came up with several.  My 12 yr old son even offered to go to the store with me to see if he could come up with more.. (he never wants to go to the store, so he was really into this!)    We had so many ideas we could not get them all done tonight, and this post will have to be broken up into 2, maybe even 3 parts.  

Kyle likes to take hard boiled eggs in his lunch, and thought a hard boiled bird would be a fun idea.  I just used edible markers to draw the face and hair  on the egg.

Next up was the yellow triangle bird.  I only had American cheese on hand, so he is kind of yellow-orange. Spread your miracle whip/mayo on a slice of bread and then place your slice of cheese.  Cut the bread into a triangle shape.   We used string cheese for the eyes,  yellow pepper for the beak and black olives for the brows and hair.   The black of the eyes were drawn on with edible marker. 

The round red bird was next.   I bought the tomatoes that are bigger than cherry/grape size but smaller than vine size.  They also happened to be on sale today.

 I made a small slice in the tomato and inserted a yellow pepper triangle.  This is kind of tricky because the tomato can easily tear causing the hole to become to big.   I used toothpick halves to place the string cheese eyes and olive pieces.  I also used them to add the red feathers on top.  This is probably okay for older kids because they will hopefully not eat the toothpicks, but younger kids might need help removing them. 

It was kind of hard finding something round and green for the pigs.  It was Kara's idea to use the cucumber.   We used yellow pepper for the crown, string cheese for the eyes and a piece of celery for the nose.  It was too hard to make the teeth, and the kids thought it looked better without them anyway.  

The white bread bird is one of Kara's creations.  She was just experimenting with bread tonight, but it could easily be made on a sandwich.  Use a round cookie cutter to cut a circle in the bread/sandwich. She used carrot pieces for the beak, string cheese for the eyes and olives for the brows and hair. 

The boomerang bird was also one of Kara's creations.  I have Angry Bird Rio on my phone, so I do not know this particular bird. She knew of him from her dad's Angry bird  game. She made him from cucumber, yellow pepper,  string cheese and black olives.  

Source: pamspartyplanning.blogspot.com

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