It’s always amazed me that my wife can cook a meal for 25 to 30 people without breaking a sweat. She preps the soup or entrée the day before as well as a cake or 2, along with a fruit platter. On the day of the dinner she will cook up a mixture of 2 or 3 meat dishes, a heap of different salads, a rice and/or potato dish and it’s always presented like it’s a photo shoot for a food magazine. All I am left to do is set the table, buy the flowers and get the drinks for everyone on the night ☺
One thing that has also impressed me about her fruit platters is that the fruit is always clean, crisp and tasty….. you know sometimes at the end of the meal when you’re eating the last bits of fruit and the fruit’s soaked in juice and the platter is a swimming pool of fruit juice. Tasty as that sounds, it’s annoying, the individual fruit has a combination of fruit flavours and the fruit isn’t as crisp as you would like it to be at the end of a meal.
So…. The TIP to not having a soggy fruit platter is: before you ever even put a piece of fruit on your platter, place some paper towel in a ramekin or small bowl and put it upside down in the middle of the platter. You can then cover the bowl with fruit and build up around it. When the fruit platter is fully prepared and you’re ready to serve it, you shouldn’t be able to see the bowl and the paper towel trick.
The paper towel under the upside down bowl will soak up all the juice from the fruit as the night goes on and your fruit will remain clean, crisp and tasty until the last bite.
I am not going to lie…… even though this trick is impressive, and also commented on and noticed by guests that are normally just used to soggy fruit when eating the last pieces of a fruit platter, the best part is eating off the platter as my wife is preparing it ☺ before anyone has even arrived.