When my older bro told me on the phone that his 3 year-old daughter got sick from chocolate recently I thought this would be a fun challenge, I'd been waiting to do this for a while. His family is big on healthy and organic foods and me being a vegetarian jumped at the opportunity to make this. The best part was that the 3 year-old had three cakes to choose from, this one, a cookie cake and a chocolate cake. Not only did she tell me that she wanted the pink cake out of all of them but she devoured most of it herself! Talk about awesomely healthy kids! She loves watermelon and her mom was so impressed with the idea and got all excited to make it with the kids to decorate it like they did their gingerbread house this past Christmas. It's so healthy and customizeable and with all kinds of colourful fruits coming into season soon enough it'll be fun for spring and summer parties in the future!
Ok, so here's a picture of the glorious cake idea I had:
So as you can see I had a theme for my idea. I made it nerdy in a creative sort of way and for those meteorologists. Seeing as this isn't the time of year for large watermelons just yet, I only found mini seedless watermelons and I bought two to make the layers. It was a very small cake mind you but it was easier for me to transport to be honest. So I will walk you through how I made each layer of the cake starting with the bottom layer and working my way up:
FALL
So for the bottom of the cake I decided to make it look a little dull, seeing as fall is a very dead-looking season I tried to make it as edible as possible and decided to peel some kiwi skins and put it around the cake to symbolize dead grass (to be honest I could have worked this out better but I was decorating it as everyone else was making food so it stayed as fresh as possible and I didn't have much counter space to do this and I wasn't as carefully creative as I normally am with this part. So I would have made more "dead grass" in this case but chose not to for reasons of lack of space and time) and I cut out pieces of what looks like leaves from an "Elevate Me" healthy fruit and nut bar that I picked up at "Noah's Health Food" store. I wanted the healthiest "fruit roll up" type thing I could find so I could use my mini metal leaf and flower vegetable cutters I found at "Kitchen Stuff Plus". So I was thinking of fruit leather and I almost thought about making my own with natural fruits, but I don't own a fruit dehydrater and you can do it in an oven but it takes a long time. So when I found those fruit bars at Noah's I was super happy! I tried it first and rolled out the bars to make them flatter to look more like leaves (they are very moldable and you could even just use the heat of your (clean) hands to mold them and press them flat if you want to) but I stupidly laid them out on a bed of melon at first before I had the better idea to lay them on the dry, fuzzy skins of the kiwi. So, I had to toss the first batch I did as the bars were all soggy by the time I got them to my Dad's house to celebrate. It's ok, I luckily brought my cutters with me and another lot of fruit bars just in case this happened. The melon balls around the side of the cake plate were just for additional decoration...didn't really go with the bottom theme as it brightened it up a bit more but I wanted to put them around if anyone wanted to have a bite-sized ball to pick at.
WINTER
Winter wasn't as elaborate as fall, but it made the cake less fruit based and vegan friendly I suppose. The yogurt went well with the fruit though, and tasted really refreshing and healthy. So vegetarians and dairy fans may appreciate this part a bit more. I wanted a healthy icing and I know yogurt is a great compliment as a fruit dip. So I made this out of really thick greek yogurt (some people strain it with a cheese cloth before they pipe it on, but I didn't find this necessary, it didn't drip all that much) and honey. I didn't measure it out much, but just added and tasted as I went until I could taste the sweetness but it was still slightly tangy. You could use other things like agave, maple syrup and maybe even pineapple juice would be nice with it (though the other options may make it stickier and thicker to stick on better as an icing, any kind of fruit juice may make it too runny), but I chose honey for my sweetener in this case. I then put the mixture into a ziplock bag, snipped a tiny hole in the corner and piped it around to make it look like, thick, frosty, drippy snow.
SPRING
For spring I ended up using the same cutters I used for the fall leaves but this time I used more of a flower and cut them into thick cantaloupe slices. I cut a kiwi slice with the leaf too and put it beside one of the flowers. I think this would have looked nice if I had butterfly shaped cutters too of a smaller size to put around it. I also cut into the side of the watermelon layer I was placing these on and scooped out some of the watermelon with a spoon to make room to fit in the desired pieces. I then secured them with toothpicks but so they were noticeable I made sure I had ones with green tassles on the ends to represent green grass or leaves, depending on the viewer's interpretation.
SUMMER
I thought this was the fun part. So I sliced into a peach and popped one half of a peach on top of the the cake to represent a summery beach scene. I had bought a tropical pack of toothpicks, stir-sticks, drink umbrellas and fun straws from somewhere (sorry, I can't remember where it was from, it was so long ago) and used it for this scene. So I took a piece of kiwi skin and cut it to look like a beach towel, layed it in the center of the peach and then I used one of the drink umbrellas to represent a beach umbrella (I know, sometimes my cleverness suprises me too. LOL!), then I took a pre-tassled bendy straw and cut off one end so that it looked like a palm tree. You could probably decorate this further if you want (by maybe taking a brown, edible marker and colouring the "trunk" of the straw tree, and maybe glueing on tiny brown craft balls if you can find them somewhere to represent coconuts) but I went the simple route and just left it green. So it wasn't easy to stick the straw into the peach without it bending so I had to cut out an asterisk shape through the peach with a knife in order to help stick it in properly. I then put a bunch of different colours of toothpicks around the peach to not only fasten it to the watermelon but to make it look like a bordered off area on the beach that is private and you might not be allowed to enter. It made it look a little more festive too.
I was going to add organic blueberry jam on the side of the peach and mix it in with yogurt to make a light blue for water on the side of the peachy beach though I stupidly forgot to put the jam in the fridge after I opened it up and realized it had become moldy...pretty disappointing, but it looked alright without it anyway.
So there you have it, a very tropical, creative, festive and healthy cake that everyone (even the kids) can enjoy looking at and eating! Here's another picture of the cake with a frog in the background. I think the frog makes this look a bit more tropical, like we're in a rain forrest. LOL!
Anway, this is my "fruit" cake design. How are you gonna decorate yours?
This is great for those trying to do more of a paleo diet, gluten-free, vegetarian (vegans could enjoy it if they don't use honey or yogurt), people with diabetes or those wanting a healthier dessert option or they want to watch their weight a bit. Fun for almost everyone!
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