Be creative and place complementary foods together on a tray.
The proper arrangement of food on a tray can make a presentation look impressive and professional. This does not require a great amount of money or time. Let your creative juices flow and with a little practice your food trays will look like works of art.
Instructions
1. Select the type of tray you want to use for your presentation. To save on money you can use a piece of cardboard covered in foil; either the shiny or the dull side works nicely. Add a paper doily and your homemade tray is ready to be presented. Other tray options include glass, silver, plastic, wood, crystal, basket, sectioned and tiered.
2. Group complementary-tasting foods together on trays. For example, put fruits together on one tray, vegetables on another tray, and breads or sandwiches on yet another tray. It is not visually appealing for a juicy food to leak onto a dry food; this will also ruin the flavor. Keeping the foods on each tray somewhat consistent also helps guests to more easily decipher what is included on each tray. Do try to place a variety of colors next to each other, avoiding a monochromatic tray.
3. Cut foods in decorative ways and arrange them on a tray. If sandwiches are being served, cut them into small triangles with the crusts removed and place them in a straight line with each corner resting on the bottom of the above triangle. This works best on a square or long rectangle tray. For fruit, use a metal scooper to carve out a melon into small balls and place in a bowl as a tray center piece. Then use a knife or triangle kitchen tool to carve decorative cuts into other fruit to be placed around the bowl of melon.
4. Use a basket tray to serve bread items. A basket tray allows for a varied presentation of muffins, breadsticks and bread loaves. Place long pieces of bread loaves and breadsticks along the interior sides of the basket tray, then place other bread items inside the basket. Provide a small set of tongs for guests to easily retrieve their selection.
5. Place desserts on a tiered tray, the order dependent on the type of dessert. Place small pieces of pie on the top tier, small squares of cheesecake on the middle tier and cookies on the bottom tier. These types of desserts are interchangeable, but always put desserts most likely to crumble on the top tier to make them easy to retrieve with less mess. Solid desserts, such as cookies and cheesecake work well on the middle and bottom tiers since they are solid enough to be taken with tongs.
Tags: basket tray, another tray, bread items, bread loaves, each tray, foods together, into small
