This Thanksgiving Fruit tray is loaded with fresh fruit, shaped like a turkey and served with fruit dip. Make it a large or small platter to serve your guests this holiday season. It’s so easy and fun to make.

 

Having simple grazing appetizers is always great for holiday meals. This Thanksgiving Fruit Tray is great for Thanksgiving breakfast, brunch or dinner. It’s simple to make with your favorite fruits and dip or dips. Make it large sized for a big crowd or make it with a dinner plate for a small gathering.
If you are looking for other Thanksgiving Appetizer recipes, consider making Thanksgiving Veggie Tray or Thanksgiving Fruit Salad.

I chose eight different fruits for my Thanksgiving Fruit platter. You can use less if you choose. Have fun with it. Just be sure to choose fruits with varying colors to mimic turkey feathers.

I highly recommend setting your dip bowl first. It will make it much easier to see how much fruit you will need. It also helps set the round shape for your turkey fruit. Work your way around the outside first and then fill your center.

Thanksgiving day can be very busy. Most of us are busy baking our Oven Roasted Turkeys, making Sweet Potato Casserole, and assembling Pumpkin Pies. Save yourself stress by purchasing pre-sliced fruit, they are available at most grocery stores. Also, assemble the night before the big dinner.

Thanksgiving Fruit Tray Ingredients

Fruit Tray recipes are great because you can easily swap and substitute ingredients around as needed or drop them entirely. You can use sweeter apples, sub tangerines or clementines for mandarins, and use whatever fruit dip you like- you’ll still have a tasty fruit tray! Here’s what fruit tray ingredients we settled on:

• Apples – You’ll want red apples and green apples for this fruit tray recipe. When it comes to the best apples for fruit tray recipes, you’ll want Granny Smith apples for greens and something like Gala or Honeycrisp for reds. These apples tend to be firm and not brown as easily, but optionally toss in lemon juice to prevent browning.
• Mandarins – Peeled and split into their mandarin sections.
• Mangoes – You can buy, peel, and slice mangos yourself or buy pre-sliced mango from the store to save time.
• Strawberries
• Pineapples – You can usually buy these pre-cut pineapple chunks at the grocery store.
• Kiwis – Peel and cut into thin slices before starting your fruit tray.
• Grapes – Mix things up by using both red and green grapes.
• Fruit Dip – Keep things simple with some Marzetti cream cheese fruit dip. You can also upgrade to a homemade fruit dip like our Pineapple Dip, Cool Whip Fruit Dip, or Raspberry Fruit Dip recipes.

If you’re planning on making our Fruit Turkey Tray exactly, you’ll also want a green pear, some candy eyes, and a bit of peanut butter as well.

See recipe card for quantities.

How to make a Fruit Tray for Thanksgiving

Like with our Thanksgiving Veggie Tray, you could just throw all these ingredients on a platter and have a delicious fruit tray. But, if you’re wanting to do something like our Thanksgiving Fruit Turkey presentation here, you have to be a bit more exact. We’ve got this quick visual, step-by-step guide for putting a fruit tray together just like ours- read on:

• Start by preparing your apples. Remove apple cores and then thinly slice apples before optionally tossing in a bit of lemon juice to prevent browning. If needed, peel/slice/prepare any other fruits that aren’t pre-cut.

• Start setting apple slices along the outside edge of your serving platter. Alternate between red and green apple slices for variety.

• Next, along the inside edge of your fanned apple slices, start alternating mango slices and mandarin sections.

• Along the bottom edge of the mango and mandarin pieces, make a layer of strawberries along the fan of fruit “feathers.” Follow that up with a layer of pineapple chunks before covering the remaining edge of the serving tray with kiwi slices and mandarins. Set dip bowl in place just behind mandarins and surround with strawberries.

• Fill in the space in the middle of the serving plate and behind the dip bowl with your blended grapes. Cut pear in half, cut an extra arc into it, and set it on the top edge of the dip bowl. If needed, poke a toothpick into the bottom of the pear slice to help it balance.

• Cut a beak from a leftover mango slice and a turkey wattle from a red apple slice. Attach candy eyes to pear with small dabs of peanut butter. Carefully transfer Thanksgiving Fruit Tray to wherever you’re serving and enjoy!

Storage / Freezing

Storage: For best results, we recommend storing any leftover fruit separately from one another. Put fruits back into original containers, resealable containers, or plastic bags and keep in the fridge. Fruits will keep for varying amounts of time- mandarins and kiwis will last about 3-4 days; apple, mango, and pineapple slices for 3-5; strawberries for 5-7; and grapes for 1-2 weeks.

Freezing: We would recommend avoiding keeping your Thanksgiving Fruit Tray in the freezer. Frozen fruits tend to go through taste and texture changes when they thaw out that makes them less pleasant for snacking on. Enjoy your fresh fruits and only freeze if you don’t mind texture changes and/or you’ve got some recipes that use frozen fruit.

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