How to Make Carrot Flowers

Cutting Simple Carrot Flowers with a Knife

Peel the carrots and cut into pieces. Take a medium or large carrot, and use a vegetable peeler to remove the skin. After peeling the carrot, use a sharp knife to cut it in half, thirds, or quarters, depending on the size of the carrot. The pieces should be approximately 3-inches (8-cm) long. You don’t necessarily have to peel the carrots. If you’re using organic carrots, the skin is usually thin enough to eat.

Cut grooves into the carrot pieces with a knife. Take each section of carrot, and use a knife that you feel comfortable making precise slices with to cut long, shallow wedges along the entire length the carrot piece to form the flowers’ petals. You’ll want to make 5 to 6 wedges around each piece of carrot. It helps to hold the carrot piece upright when you’re cutting out the wedges. Balance it against a cutting board with one hand, and use the other to cut.

Slice the lengths of carrot into coins. Once you’ve cut out wedges around the entire piece of carrot, place it horizontally on the cutting board, and use your knife to slice it into coins that are approximately ¼-inch (½-cm) thick. Each coin will be a small flower.

Cutting Delicate Carrot Flowers with a Knife

Peel and prepare a carrot. Cut the top and the bottom off the carrot.

Cut a section of carrot off the wide end. You want a nice, wide base for your flower. Shape one side into a half circle or dome.

Mark the petals on the curved side, using a knife. You're aiming for five petal shapes around the outside, which will be attached at the base of the carrot. Use the knife to mark from one point to another (with a curved petal shape, pointing upward).

Cut each petal into shape. Don't go all the way down; leave the bottom attached.

Cut away some of the carrot behind the petal. Be careful not to gouge out too much, but you want your petals to be a nice, thin layer.

Repeat the last two steps until you finish the outer layer. Every time that you finish a layer, make sure that each petal is curved, and doesn't have any sharp edges on it. Repeat those step until you get about 4-6 layers.

Make the leftover chunk in the middle narrower by shaping it with the knife. Cut that part, and make it shorter than the other layers.

Use the knife to create a hole in the middle.

That's it!

Using Cookie Cutters to Make Carrot Flowers

Peel and slice a carrot into coins. Take a medium or large carrot and use a vegetable peeler to remove the skin. Next, take a sharp knife and carefully slice the carrot into coins. Make sure that they coins are ¼-inch (½-cm) thick or less, or you may have trouble cutting the flowers. If you have a mandoline, you may find it easier to cut the carrot into coins with it.

Use a small round cookie cutter to create a circle in each coin. Find a small round cookie cutter that’s smaller in circumference than the carrot coins. Press it into the center of the carrot coin to create a perfectly round circle. If you don’t have a round cookie cutter that’s small enough to fit inside the coins that you’ve cut, you can use a small plastic cap from a bottle or other household item to cut out perfectly round coins. While the round cookie cutter will give a symmetrical circle, you don’t necessarily have to use it. If you’re comfortable with the finished carrot flowers being slightly irregular, you can skip this step.

Cut notches around the circle with a diamond-shaped cookie cutter. When you’ve used the round cookie cutter on all of your carrot coins, use the edge of a diamond-shaped cookie cutter to cut out small “V” shapes around the entire edge of the coins. That will form the petals for the flowers. If you don’t have a diamond-shaped cookie cutter, you can cut out the “V” shapes using a sharp knife.

Making Simple Carrot Flowers with a Zester

Peel the carrots and trim off the ends. Take a medium size carrot, and remove the skin using a vegetable peeler. With a sharp knife, trim off the ends of the carrot to get the thickness as close to uniform along the entire length as you can.

Run a zester along the length of the carrot to create notches. Instead of using a knife to cut out notches, drag a citrus zester along the entire length of the carrot. The notches won’t be as deep as they would be with a knife, so the flowers will have a delicate, frilly look when they’re finished. For this method, you can’t use a grater or microplane style zester. You need a traditional zester that features a series of sharp holes at the end of a handle.

Cut the carrot into coins. After you’ve run the zester along the entire length of the carrot, use a sharp knife to slice it into coins. You can make the coins as thick or thin as you like, and each will have the notches to create the subtle flower shape.

Creating Carrot Flowers with a Vegetable Sharpener/Peeler

Peel the carrot. Take a medium size carrot, and use a vegetable peeler or knife to remove the skin. It’s important to remove all of the skin so that when you run the carrot through the sharpener, you’re only shaving off the flesh and not any of the skin.

Shave the carrot with a vegetable sharpener. Do this until you have enough flesh to form a flower. Use a vegetable peeler that resembles a pencil sharpener and insert the carrot. Turn it to shave off the outer layers of flesh in one continuous strip. Shave the carrot until you have enough shavings to create the size of flower that you want. You can use a traditional vegetable peeler or even a knife to shave off the carrot flesh too. However, it’s more difficult to keep the shavings in a continuous strip with one of those tools, so work slowly and carefully.

Remove the carrot shavings from the sharpener, and curl into a flower shape. When you’ve shaved enough flesh from the carrot, carefully take the shavings off the sharpener, going slow to avoid tearing them. Using your fingers, curl the shavings into a flower shape by wrapping them around themselves. Because of the way the peeler shaves the vegetables, the carrot flesh will naturally curl in on itself, so follow the natural curve to make shaping the flower easier.

Stick a toothpick through the bottom of the flower to hold its shape. After you’ve shaped the carrot shavings into a flower, take a toothpick and push it through the bottom where the ends of the savings overlap. That will help the flower keep its shape, so you can place it on a plate as a garnish without worrying about it coming undone. The toothpick should be able to pierce the shaved carrot flesh on its own, but if it doesn’t go through easily, use a knife to create a small hole that you can push the toothpick through.