watermelon basket
summertime fun in a basket of fruits
Watermelon Basket of Summertime Fruits
For a Fruit Salad that goes a step beyond the ordinary, this Watermelon Basket is amazingly simple to bang out.
The easiest way to make this is to create a bowl without a handle. It was my mother’s signature thing—As the coals on the grill were dying down and the last sticky marshmallow-crusted stick was tossed to the ground, leaving a group of happy, sugared up kids (and a parade of ants, who were excitedly about to embark upon their own festival), the finale of her backyard summertime gatherings was to bring out this beauty .
But once she learned how to add a handle, you could see the pure pride just radiating from her face.
A roll of masking tape and a sharp, pointy knife are all you need.
And just think! You won’t have to go looking for a bowl to serve the fruit salad from!
And I was so proud that it was my mom who made it!
This is how Mom did it:
In its most basic version, you just need to draw a line around your watermelon so that you know where to make your cuts. The easiest way to make it come out straight and even is to run a long piece of masking tape all around to act as a guideline. (Make sure the melon is dry or the tape won’t stick!) Once you’ve concluded that your tape is in the right place, start cutting off the top, with the top edge of the tape as your line.
Once you’ve removed the top, you can call it finished, or you can take a paring knife and cut out little triangles all the way around to give you this pointy zig-zag edge, Fancy!
Adding a handle isn’t complicated. Once you’ve got your masking tape wrapped around the watermelon, take another piece of tape and run it across, over the pop, from one edge of the tape to the next. Now, all you have to do is cut around the tape. For a thicker handle, use two strips of tape.
Then you can zig-zag the edge of the basket, and also zig-zag the edges of the handle if you want to.
The next trick is to hollow out the basket. The easiest, fastest way is to cut out chunks o the watermelon with a knife until you have nothing left but a shell.
But it’s so much more beautiful to scoop out the melon with a melon baller!
My mother had this cute, wooden handled tool with a scoop on either end, of two different sizes. She, and then I, got a lot of mileage out of that old tool.
The masking might still be a good idea, especially if you’re like me and can’t draw a straight linel But with this fancy little set of tools, the project is a snap!
And for the Grownups…
Having different sizes and shapes of ballers makes for a very cool presentation, but this little cutter set really rocks. All I can wonder is, where has it been all my life!
So! Now the question is, what fruits should we use in our basket? All manner of melons are a great place to start. When you get to the bottom of the melons where you can’t get any more balls, just cut out the rest in pieces. Those will go at the bottom of the basket.
Starfruit works wonderfully well, because, well, they’re stars. Dragon fruit doesn’t taste like much, but it’s gorgeous, and quite nutritious, Sweet pineapple wedges are appropriate. All manner of berries are nice, too, but remember that, as far as storing leftovers goes, they can be a bit fragile, especially raspberries, so use them judiciously. For a little extra drama, you can drape small bunches of variously colored grapes cascading over the sides.
A lovely finish for Shavuot, Lag B’Omer, or any warm weather celebration
The icing on the cake…The spots on the leopard…The roar of the kitten
If you choose, you can “preserve” your fruits with a generous splash of one of my favorites
Midori Melon Liqueur Bacardi Coquito Coconut Cream Liqueur Drillaud Orange Liqueur