Today I’ll be talking about making frosted fruit as a festive table decoration and making simple tea light candle holders from fruit.

Let’s get fruity!

The Victorians were huge believers in decoration, in fact they did go a tad over the top now and then. However sugared fruit was something that they had acquired from previous generations and they put it to good use. This looks seriously posh and tastes good too!

Here’s How To Make Your Own Frosted Fruit;

All you need is an assortment of fruits; apples, pears, tangerines, grapes anything that has a proper outside fresh. Strawberries and soft fruits can be used but they disintegrate and go soggy within a matter of hours due to lack of a firm outer peel. The other fruits I’ve mentioned will keep like this for well over a week, tho’ don’t go eating them after day one.

2 eggs

Caster Sugar

2 small plates

small bowl for the egg white

Break the egg carefully and put the yolk in the fridge to use later to make your scrambled eggs even richer and yummier. You only need the egg white here. There is no need to do any whisking or anything as you are just going to paint on the egg white or dip the fruits into it.

Pour the sugar into one of the plates that you can easily get any pieces of fruit into.

Now dip each piece of fruit into the egg white or just paint it on using a clean paint brush or basting brush. Give it a little shake to remove excess and then scatter on the sugar. I use 2 plates here, one I roll the fruit in and the other so that I can tip the sugar into the empty plate and start over scattering it over again on to the first plate. The first layer of sugar will sink into the egg white, don’t panic, just scatter on more sugar and keep going till you have the frosty look you want.

Set each piece of fruit aside on baking paper to dry thoroughly for 1 hour.

Pile up on a plate or bowl or spread down the centre of the dining table rather like a Roman feast.

To make the candle holders make sure you have a piece of fruit with a level base so it will stand well and not wobble and topple over. Now take a tea light candle and holding it in the place you want to put it on the fruit, carefully draw round the tea light with a pen. Take a sharp paring knife and cut out around the line and carefully scoop out the flesh in the scooped area so that your tea light holder will fit snugly into the fruity holder.

Don’t forget to sugar a carrot to leave out for Rudolph on Christmas Eve he deserves some frosted fruit too.

Karon x