Watermelon Cake

My little sister and I had a little time to kill in an area we weren’t familiar with, so as we drove around we came upon a used bookstore. A bright yellow house. You couldn’t miss it. We had to stop.

As we browsed around and did some last minute peeking at various things, I saw on the front of a magazine—maybe Woman’s Day—the cutest watermelon cake.

Did you know I’m a fan of watermelon? My favorite fruit—and it’s such a cute and refreshing delight. And it reminds me of my momma.

Too cheap to buy a used magazine, I turned to the instructions in the back and did my best to memorize how the cake was put together. It seemed simple enough.

Here’s my attempt.

I know you could make a box cake and I’m pretty sure that’s what it said, but I felt that a homemade cake would be more dense, therefore holding shape better.

There’s two round cakes. You cut both in half—leaving you with four halves. One of those halves you cut in thirds, so you have watermelon “slices.” The other three halves you will stack on top of each other. Then you’re going to turn the three halves on its side—rounded end down—so it’s going to look like a watermelon hunk.

Here's my icing:

In the magazine it said to use chocolate covered raisins as the seeds. My shopaholic best friend helps me shop. We were out one day and as we were leaving a store, I spotted these chocolate covered sunflower seeds. Inside there were black ones. After conferring with my personal shopper, we decided they’d make better seeds for my cake. Darn, I had to eat the chocolate covered raisins. What I do to sacrifice, can you imagine?

What is not to love about this cutie cake? And a cute dessert for a summer gathering.

As a side note, I was originally going to make my mom’s Breath of Spring Cake that had lemon filling. Except that I decided to try a different yellow cake. I also made a chocolate cake since I couldn’t decide between yellow or chocolate. I used a buttercream icing. But how fun would it be to make the lemon filling and decorate the cake to look like a lemon instead of a watermelon? Or use orange filling and make an orange slice? Oh the possibilities.

Let me also just say, forget the “slices” because the icing sticks to the crumbs and makes this crummy looking mess. I’m a little embarrassed to show this photo, but what the heck.

I fed it to my sweet-toothed husband who didn’t seem to mind. That slice was all chocolate. My yellow Butter Bonnie Cake (from Betty Crocker Cookbook) was on the dry side.

Overall icing the cake was the hardest part.

I made this cake for bunco and I decided to have the other cake be on its side rather than standing up as it was easier to put the icing on.