Strawberry Rose

Decorations with fresh fruit are a great way to add some color to your desserts. You can cut fruits in an abundance of ways. One new fruit cutting technique I discovered on Youtube was the strawberry rose. There are two different ways of making this fruit rose, but I found the whole strawberry method to be the easiest. The other method involved slicing halves of strawberries, fanning them out, and twisting them into a rose. While it does look more like a rose, it was tricky for me to get right, and I opted for this method as a faster way to get a similar result. For the rose, you will need one strawberry that has a pyramid shape, or a pointed top. Strawberries have a lot of variety in shapes, so try to pick similar shapes for the roses for consistency, but different sizes can be used to make bigger or smaller roses. To hole the strawberry, you can either use a skewer or fork, but I was able to hold it with my fingers. You will also need a pairing knife, or any kind of small knife, to make cuts in the strawberry. Start off at the base of the strawberry near the stem, holding the strawberry upright. Make a slit above the bottom on one side, then flare the knife outwards to fold the flap of strawberry out. This is how you create the petals in the rose, making sure not to cut all the way through to preserve the petal shapes.

Make four total slices and petals all the way around the base of the strawberry. It should look like the image below when you are finished. Try not to overlap the slices or you might cut off the petals. If the petals start to close up as you work on the rose, you can always flare out the petals more later once the rose is done or placed on your dessert.

We can now work on the second tier of the rose. Repeat the same steps of creating slices around the strawberry. This time, you are going to start above the petals at the base and make the petals in between the base petals.

Finish off the rose by doing another circle of petals at the top, and then slice the pointed top in half and flare it out.

And then you have a nice strawberry rose! It makes for a beautiful decoration on a cake or cupcake. You can leave the stem on for that classic rose look or cut off the bottom to place the rose upright. If the petals close up as you work on it, remember to take the knife and flare out the petals again. This is a really simple way to upgrade your cakes to make them fancy. I liked utilizing fresh fruit as it is my favorite addition to any cake, so be sure to try out this strawberry rose on your next dessert.