Veggie Tray Ideas: Broccoli Tree

We always have cut vegetables out for easy snacking especially when we’re entertaining. And our #DisneyKids Preschool Playdate was no different! But this veggie tray idea would work for many party themes with trees like Safari, Zoo or Jungle. Here are the quick and easy steps to make one yourself:

Ingredients

• one head of green cabbage
• one large stalk of broccoli
• veggies for snacking (we had baby carrots, celery sticks and grape tomatoes
• wooden toothpicks with pointed ends on both sides (you’ll need the sturdy kind for this project)

How To

Choose a serving tray > Find one that’s large enough to set the 5-6″ diameter cabbage base in the center and still have room to place the veggies around for snacking. We had a super small party so we stacked our snacking veggies on one half of the tray and decorated the other half with toy animals.

Set the base > Using a sharp knife slice off a third of the cabbage to create the round base for the tree.

Mount the tree > Separate the broccoli stalks and rinse them well. Choose the largest or most tree-like of the stalks in your bunch and hold it above the cabbage mound to be sure you’re happy with the dimensions. Again use the knife to slice of the bottom of the stalk so it’s a flat, clean edge. Mount the broccoli stalk onto the cabbage base using a toothpick. Our display was fairly small so we only needed one toothpick. But if you have a large stalk of broccoli be sure to secure it with as many toothpicks as you need. Simple insert the toothpick into the bottom of the stalk, leaving about half of the tooth pick out an the insert the other half into the broccoli base.

This simple idea was inspired by the Tree of Life at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park. Mickey recently invited us to host a preschool play date themed around the Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando, FL and the tree is so majestic that we knew we wanted to have it as a centerpiece on our snack table. The question was how to recreate it? Once we noticed the tree looked a lot like broccoli we knew it was the most awesome veggie tray idea we’ve had yet.

For another Mickey Mouse party idea check out our Mickey Ears Hummus & Carrots.