Last week was my son Shayaan’s 3rd birthday. He is not very fond of cakes, but loves fruits…watermelon is one of his favourites. So we decided to make a watermelon shaped cake to make him happy.. Got the idea from here and the actual recipe is double the quantity…
Ingredients:
For Cake:
3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cups unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/2 tbsp baking soda
1/2 tbsp vinegar
1 1/2 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2-3/4 tbsp wilton rose icing color
1/2 tsp wilton red icing color
For Buttercream Frosting:
1 cup butter, at room temperature
4 cups powdered sugar/ icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2-3 tbsp milk
wilton red red icing color
white fondant
wilton kelly green icing color
wilton moss green icing color
wilton yellow icing color
Preparation:
For Cake:
- Preheat oven to 180 degree celcius. Grease and flour or line the bottom of two 6 ” roundbaking pans and one oven safe glass bowl / stainless bowl with parchment paper and keep it aside.
- Sift together flour and salt into a bowl and keep it aside.
- In a large mixing bowl or in the bowl of an electric mixer, add the butter, oil, sugar and vanilla essence and beat at medium speed until well blended.
- Beat in eggs, one at a time. With mixer on low, add rose pink icing food coloring.
- Then add one third of the flour mixture alternating with half of the butter milk. Beat in another third of flour mixture, then second half of butter milk. End with the remaining flour and beat until just combined.
- Place baking soda in a small cup/ dish, stir in vinegar and add to the batter with machine running and beat for 10 seconds. (or quickly fold into the batter.)
- Divide half of the batter evenly between the 2 prepared pans and the bowl, sprinkle the chocolate chips and then top each evenly with remaining batter.
- Bake it in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes or until the toothpick inserted into the centre of the cakes comes out clean. ( For bowl cake, it will take more time…)
- Remove cakes from the oven and allow to cool in its pan for about 10 minutes then remove from the pans and let them cool completely on a wire rack..
For Buttercream Frosting:
- In a bowl or in the bowl of an electric mixer, add butter and beat on medium speed until completely smooth.
- One cup at time, add 2 cups of icing sugar , beating after each addition.
- Add vanilla extract and beat to combine. Add about 1 tbsp of milk/ cream and continue beating.
- Add the remaining 2 cups of icing sugar, one at a time and beat. Add 1-2 tbsp milk/ cream and beat until the desired consistency is reached.
- Divide the frosting into 2 bowls. Keep one of these bowls aside for later and colour the other bowl with wilton red red icing colour until it matches with watermelon pink.
Assembling the cake:
- Level the top of 2 round cakes. In a serving plate/ cake board, place the first round cake and spread a layer of pink buttercream on top , then sprinkle chocolate chips on top of that.
2. Then repeat this with the other round cake and finish off by topping 2 filled round cakes with bowl cake.
3. The next step is to carefully carve away just outer crust of the stacked cakes, keeping the dome shape intact.
4. Take the reserved white buttercream frosting that set aside and then frost the outside of the entire cake with a thin layer of frosting (crumb coat).
5. Place this crumb coated cake in the fridge for about 30 minutes to firm up the frosting.
6.Then ice the entire cake with remaining white buttercream as smoothly as possible and place in the fridge for about 1 hour to firm it up.
7. To create the white rind of watermelon, roll out about 2 lb of white fondant and then cover the cake.
8. Trim away the excess at the bottom and make it smooth and nice using a fondant smoothers…
9. Then paint the rind using a clean round tip paint brush by mixing wilton moss green, wilton kelly green and yellow and then make stripe-like watermelon patterns. (Paint the cake in stages, letting it rest for about half an hour in between).
10.Let the cake completely dry before cutting. Cut them into slices and then serve..
- The original recipe uses alcohol for mixing the colours for painting the rind…Since I used water for mixing, I didn’t get the perfect green color and pattern for the watermelon….
