How to Make Edible and Affordable Centrepieces
Trendy, Waste-Free Ways to Decorate your Table
Some traditionalists insist that a dinner party isn’t complete unless a centrepiece adorns the table. Options like marzipan shaped into figurines, bread sculptures and cored apples serving as candle holders may be unique ways to decorate the table, without creating waste.
Making an Edible Centre Piece
Try slicing citrus fruit and suspend them in a vase filled with water. If nobody dares to use the slices for a twist in their drink, the slices can be turned into marmalade after the party.
If your schedule or patience doesn’t allow for all that cutting and slicing, just leave the fruit whole, in a vertical vase: Let the colour and shapes of the fruit be a centre piece in themselves.
Cored Fruit or Vegetables as Candleholders
Take a few apples and core them; fill the hole with a taper, and you have a candleholder that can be eaten after it’s used. This is especially handy for anyone who ran out of candleholders, or is just reluctant to clutter their home with seldom used furnishings.
Try an attractive or unusual heirloom squash, such as pink banana squash for a candleholder, or core a red Hubbard squash and fill the space with flowers. If you don’t like the idea of gutting squash you won’t eat later, try making bread.
Homemade Vegan Bread Sculpture
- 2 cups hot water (not boiling)
- 2 tablespoons raw sugar (or white sugar)
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 4 cups organic whole wheat or stone ground white flour
- 2 tablespoons dry yeast
Instructions
- Mix the flour with yeast, sugar and salt. Pour in the hot water and mix for 3 minutes with a dough hook, or put all ingredients in listed order in a bread machine set to “dough”. (If you don’t have a dough hook, or a bread machine, get a spoon and mix it by hand.
- If it’s still sticky, add up to one cup of flour, until it’s smooth and elastic, roughly another eight minutes. Let the dough rise for about fifteen minutes and punch it down.
How to Make a Year of the Ox Bread Centrepiece
Divide it into two equal pieces, and then cut one of the pieces into halves. You’ll have one piece that’s larger than the rest, and the other three will make for other parts. Flour a cookie sheet and place the ox’s head on it and add the ears and horns on it when it’s on the sheet.
- Form the larger part into an oval. Slam the cut edge against the counter to flatten it out completely and taper the dough upwards into a crude pyramid shape.
- Flatten the smaller side of the length; that narrower end will be the ox’s muzzle. Stick two fingers into the top end for nostrils. Make finger holes in the location at the wider end of the base for eyeholes.
- Take one of the two smaller pieces and roll it into one long cylinder. Cut it in half and shape the ends into points. These will be the ox’s horns.
- The remaining small portion will be ears; roll the dough out into a circle shape and cut that into halves, forming two “C” shapes. Pull the dough at the curve into a rounded point, and turn the outer edges towards the centre: These are the curve in the outer ear.
- To “glue” the ox’s characteristics into place, dampen the ends you will fix in place with water; it will feel sticky. Hold it in place for a few seconds. The ears go on the sides while the horns should be placed a little above the ears. If you’re worried the horns will slide off, you can put them on the top of the head.
Place the bread in a cold oven on the middle shelf of your oven, and place a pan of hot water on the shelf below it. (As the oven heats, it will create humidity in the oven, making a crunchier crust.) Set the oven to bake at 400 Fahrenheit and bake for 40 minutes until brown.
fruit in a clean bowl can be striking
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fruit in a clean bowl can be striking
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