Watermelon Cat Cake!

It’s a watermelon cat cake! SURE WHY NOT! I teamed up with my Internet pals and brilliant dessert creatives Vickie Liu and Samantha Chiu to form #cutefruitclub – we made kawaii, fruit-inspired desserts to kick off Summer! I’ve been wanting to try a “watermelon” cake for a while, but I wanted to give it a Coco Cake Land vibe – so I made it into an animal, of course! Hehe. Want to know how I made this guy? Read on, reader!

Start off with your favourite vanilla cake recipe (or, try an actual watermelon-flavoured cake recipe like this one from my pal Sugar Hero) and tint it a deep fuchsia/pink colour (I used a mix of electric pink and fuchsia gel colours). Sprinkle in some chocolate chips for “seeds.” Divide your batter evenly between three 7 or 8 inch round cake pans! Bake and cool completely before beginning to frost your cake.

Make a big batch of vanilla buttercream (you can find my tried and true recipes for both vanilla cake and buttercream in my book!), dividing the batch. Keep about 2/3 cup uncoloured (white), and tint 3/4 cup a nice bright green (I used leaf green). Tint the rest of the buttercream the same colour as the cake batter – a nice bright pink! (yes, I know watermelon is technically red, lol). Fill your cake layers and frost the entire exterior of the cake with the pink buttercream. Then, fill a large piping bag fitted with a large multi-opening tip with the pink buttercream. Fill a small piping bag fitted with a smaller multi-opening tip with the white buttercream, and a small piping bag fitted with a multi-opening tip with the green buttercream! Starting with the green piping bag, pipe the “green fur watermelon rind” (hehe) around the bottom of the cake. Next, pipe the “white fur watermelon rind.” Then for the pink fur, I piped upwards in lines, going all around the cake until it was completely covered. For the top, I started at the edges and worked my way inward.

Make the fondant face! I used pre-coloured black and pink fondant to make the kitty face features. Use your hands to shape two white triangular ears, anchoring them with wooden BBQ skewers cut to size. Press the fondant pieces into the cake – then add chocolate chips for watermelon seeds!

If you wanted to bypass the cat face part of this cake (BUT WHY), simply pipe the entire cake and add “seeds” by pressing in chocolate chips (swirly-side-down) into the entire cake!

CUTE, AMIRITE??

Slice in to your watermelon cat cake friend and enjoy, *wink *wink. Perfect for Summer birthdays – or, make it for that weird and amazing friend in your life who would appreciate a watermelon cat cake, hehe. Don’t forget to check out the #cutefruitclub hashtag on Instagram to see what fruity concoctions we’ve come up with! Happy start of Summer, cake pals!! xo Lyndsay