“Green” Apple Candlestick Centerpiece

For your next party’s table decorations,   make a centerpiece that is edible, beautiful, useful, and child friendly. Let’s make an apple candlestick. Picture a glossy red apple placed on a tray or serving platter, with a pristine white taper candle inserted at the core of the apple. This is so easy to do.

First, decide what platter or tray you will be placing the candlestick on. Consider using a mirrored tray. That would enhance the color of the apple and the sparkle of the flame. If using a colored serving piece, consider whether what you want to use might clash with the typical colors of apples and perhaps re-evaluate your choice. Greens and earth tones or neutrals might be the best choice.

Next, consider any other theme that you are using for  your party or event. For example, for the Fourth of July, you’d probably want 3 pure red apples, with 3 candles–one red, one white, and one blue.  If it were a fall party, you might choose a multicolored apple to play up the fall colors.

If you want to involve your children in this project, let them go with you to buy the apples. Let them select an apple and place it on a flat surface to see if the apple will sit squarely and evenly on the platter.

Why  not purchase 3 apples. Arrangements of items in odd numbers is always more visually appealing.

Next  get your candles and make sure they are dripless. You’ll want to be able to eat the apples after the party.

In order to be able to insert the candle into the apple, you are going to need an apple corer. Set the washed apple on a cutting board, preferably on a surface lower than the typical kitchen counter. You are going to want to be able to press down with the corer at a straight angle to the base of the apple, and sometimes having your work surface too high makes that difficult. If the apple doesn’t sit exactly square on the cutting board, take a sharp knife and make a cut across the blossom end of the apple (the bottom) very close to the end of the apple. You only want to cut off enough to allow it to sit squarely.

Once each apple has been cored, insert the candles from the stem end of the apple to the blossom end. The fit will be snug but not difficult to insert. If your kids are helping, this is something they could do.

Finally, assemble your centerpiece on your serving piece, platter or mirrored tray. Add other elements to bring out your theme.

Light your candles and enjoy your guests applauding your cleverness. If your kids helped, let them take credit for making such a beautiful display.

The next day, after your party,  you can eat the apples or bake them. If baking them, bake them in a muffin pan or wrap the bottom of the apple with aluminum foil. Normally when baking apples, you don’t core them all the way through and the sweet filling can’t flow out. With these apples, however, we cored them all the way through so the filling would just run out if you didn’t take one of those precautions.

There is something so appealing (pun intended!) about a centerpiece made from nature’s bounty. You can enjoy it all the more because it is “green” and you can recycle it later.