Since it was Halloween, I wanted to bring in a themed treat. Since there are 24 girls in her troop and it was a combined party with 10 Daisies, I had a few constraints due to the quantity involved. I needed to be able to assemble them fairly rapidly, they needed to be easily transportable (with the quantity I needed), and I didn't want to spend a fortune.
A few years ago I had carved Jack O'Lantern oranges for my daughter's preschool class of 12. I knew from experience that I didn't have the time to carve 35 oranges. I found candy corn fruit cocktails on Pinterest and liked the idea, but needed to shrink the serving size for both transport and cost purposes. I also knew the whipped cream on top would be a challenge since I needed to pre-make the fruit.
I took this inspiration and used the pineapple (my daughter's favorite fruit) and oranges as the yellow and orange layer. My daughter and I visited the produce section of the store to pick a white fruit. We settled on bananas since the inside is white. I also opted to use fresh clementines instead of canned Mandarin oranges.
I peeled the oranges and separated them into individual segments. I cut the pineapple into wedges about 1" wide and 1/2" tall. Then I sliced the bananas into 1/4" thick slices and cut them in half.
I used wooden toothpicks to skewer a pineapple chunk. an orange segment and a banana. I was able to fit enough candy corn fruit for 35 girls into a container and packed additional fruit in separate containers for the girls to take more of their favorite.
Overall, I was very pleased with how these turned out. The bananas did start to turn brown by the next day, but lasted about 2 hours before that. Definitely not a food you can make far in advance, but less time sensitive than whipped cream. The only change that I would make in the future would be to use plastic toothpicks as my toothpicks softened over time and a few broke.
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