Halloween Fruit Bowl

Halloween Fruit Bowl
Halloween dates back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain but is now a widely celebrated holiday filled with candy and costumes. Besides trick or treating, it is not uncommon to see workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods throwing Halloween parties during the last few weeks of October.

This Halloween may look a little different this year. With COVID-19 still lingering, family and friends are opting to celebrate at socially distanced parties, or through online platforms like Zoom. Whichever way you decide to celebrate, there are plenty of ways to make your Halloween bash spOoOoky, delicious, and healthy!

1. Use a Pumpkin or Watermelon as your bowl
It doesn’t get much better than this! Carving out a jack-o-lantern pumpkin/watermelon and filling it with fruit, or even better, using the fruit as fake guts is an easy and creative way to serve your Halloween Fruit Bowl. Check out this Fruit Salad Watermelon!

2. Use Mason Jars
Attending or having a socially distanced gathering? In light of COVID, it may be best to use individual servings of fruit cups. These can be great party favors or little gifts for your coworkers. To dress it up, you can add a Halloween cloth covering and tie with a Halloween themed bow. Or if you want to get really crafty, you can glue plastic spiders and googly eyes onto the jar! Check out this Halloween Mason Jar!

3. Skewers
Another COVID friendly option is to use skewers. People can grab the skewer by the uncovered end and avoid touching serving utensils or foods that others have touched. Cookie cutters come in a variety of shapes which can be used to cut cantaloupe and honeydew into Halloween shapes, making your skewers a bit more festive! Check out this Halloween Fruit Kabobs!

4. Icing Bags
Icing bags used to make what looks like good ole’ candy corn is both visually pleasing and a nutritious option to the commonly debated food. Add a few mini marshmallows to represent the bottom white half of candy corn and fill the rest with a healthy, nutritious layer of mandarins and another layer of cut-up pineapple. Not only do you get two fruit servings, but you also have a marshmallow treat at the end (or beginning depending on how you open the bag!). You don’t need to worry about any germs contaminating the fruit as these bags are tied shut! Check it out Candy Corn Fruit!

5. Fruit Platter Spread
There are so many different colored fruits that make it easy to decorate design on your platter. Pumpkin, witches, and vampires are all fun designs to create with your cut up and whole fruit. Serving toothpicks on the side of the platter or inserting them in the fruit allows individuals to pick the fruit up and drop it on their plates. Check out this beautiful Pumpkin Fruit Spread!

6. Use Chocolate Molds
My two favorites, chocolate, and fruit! Chocolate molds have become very popular over the years. To do this you would want to use a brain mold (or another Halloween shape!), fill it with melting chocolate, let it harden, and then fill with finely cut up fruit for a chocolatey snack. Strawberries are my favorite fruit to use as the color can give an eerie feeling and chocolate is a great complimentary pair to strawberries! Make it more nutritious by melting half dark chocolate and half milky chocolate. Check out these Chocolate Brain Molds!

7. Orange Jack-O-Lanterns
These are just too cute not to try! Using orange as a Jack-o-lantern is a lot easier to cut than a massive pumpkin. Plus, orange is easier to use for a single serving. Make sure you are carving carefully! The orange peel is a lot thinner than pumpkin so less pressure is needed. Check it out here Orange Jack-O-Lantern!

8. Fruit Pizza
Fruit pizza is a rising trend for dessert. You can make a fruit pizza by baking a giant cookie, using a cream cheese yogurt frosting, and decorating with cut-up fruit. Sugar Skulls are great for this as they incorporate a wide variety of colors and shapes! Check this out Sugar Skull Fruit Pizza!

9. Cauldron
One of my favorites and a classic way to serve a Halloween treat is a cauldron! Who said all Halloween fruit bowls had to be for kids? You can easily make this into an Adults Only Fruit Sangria by adding wine to your cut-up fruit. Check it out Witches’ Brew Sangria!

Fruit Bowl Tips
When making your Halloween Fruit Bowl, it is important to focus on preparation. Some cut fruits brown quickly due to being oxidized, or the exposure to air. This gives your fruit a brownish color. Although these are perfectly fine to eat and the exposure to air doesn’t impact taste, the appearance is off-putting.
We use all five senses, including sight to judge what food will taste like simply by how it looks. This is why we would want to avoid any browning of the fruit. Mangoes, bananas, and apples are common offenders of oxidation. Fortunately, if you still want to use mangoes and apples in your Halloween Fruit Bowl, you can toss the cut-up fruit in lemon juice. The acid in the lemon will slow the rate of browning and keep your fruits brighter for longer!

Choose the Rainbow

When choosing your fruits, you want to make sure you pick a variety of colors. Remember, we use all five senses, including sight, so a colorful fruit bowl would be visually appealing to eat. The color in fruits can be attributed to phytochemicals or chemicals found in plants. In addition to color, phytochemicals are also beneficial to our health and act as antioxidants. Their role is to protect and regenerate essential nutrients and work to deactivate cancer-causing substances.
Each color found in fruit is associated with a specific phytochemical and contains special healthy benefiting properties, which is why we would want a variety of colors in our Halloween Fruit Bowl.

Our brains not only perceive variations of colors appealing, but shapes too! Fruits are soft enough to cut into different shapes without a ton of manpower. You can use cookie cutters, ice cream scoops, and your kitchen knife to shape your fruit. Some basic shapes you can cut with your knife include triangles, squares, rectangles, and parallelograms (if you are feeling fancy).

Some of the best fruits to use in your Halloween Fruit Bowl include apples and mangoes (coated in lemon juice), blueberries, grapes, strawberries, kiwi, honeydew, cantaloupe, pineapple, oranges, and pears! These fruits give you various colors, shapes, flavors, and phytochemicals to ensure your Halloween fruit bowl is enticing to the eye, delicious, and healthy!