Cut Fruit Tray

• 1). Arrange washed, whole purple cabbage or whole romaine lettuce leaves on the surface of your platter. Alternatively, you can cover the surface of a wooden serving tray with plastic wrap and lay sushi mats on top of the plastic wrap to create an Asian-inspired look.
  
  
• 2). Hollow out a honey dew, cantaloupe or small, seedless watermelon. Slice off a portion of the bottom, so that the hollowed out boat sits flat in the center of your fruit tray. Use a melon baller, also called a parisienne scoop, to make honeydew, cantaloupe and watermelon balls. Place multicolored melon balls in the hollowed out melon boat, and place the boat in the center of the fruit tray.
  
  
• 3). Peal and slice melons in their natural "U" shape and lay the melon slices in fans around the melon boat. Peal and slice a pineapple in 1-inch slices. Cut the pineapple rounds in quarters and pile the pieces around at four edges of the fruit tray.
  
  
• 4). Place two large bunches of green grapes and two large bunches of red grapes next to the pineapple pieces, but opposite from each other, to spread out the colors. Fill in remaining gaps with bunches of strawberries, blueberries and blackberries, keeping like colors away from each other, depending on the season.
  
  

Whole Fruit Tray

• 1). Place a whole pineapple in the center of the platter for decoration. Set bunches of ripe bananas on either side of the pineapple.
  
  
• 2). Fill the tray with whole golden and red apples, oranges and pears. Pile on bunches of jumbo grapes and strawberries to fill in gaps, keeping like colors at opposite ends of the tray.
  
  
• 3). Add whole dry figs, prunes, apricots and dates to the whole fruit tray. Generally speaking, place dry fruit at the front of the tray so that they don't go unnoticed and uneaten.