When I asked the husband before his birthday if he’d like me to bake a cake for him, he requested for a healthy and low calorie cake that we both could eat without worries so our diet plans wouldn’t go haywire. But to be honest, I find that really hard to do so because it takes a lot of effort to make a nice cake and a lot more time to do up the decoration and if I were to remove the sugar content, reduce it or make it flourless, it just wouldn’t taste and look the same. So in the end, I decided to make a ‘bake-free’ watermelon cake instead just by using fruits in season and my good old cookie cutters.
Ta daa!
Watermelon Cake / Fruit Cake Recipe
Ingredients
1 big watermelon
1 pineapple or rock melon
2 kiwi fruits
5 strawberries
a small handful of blueberries
a bunch of seedless grapes
You would also need some cookie cutters. I used heart shapes in 2 sizes.
First, I started off by carving out an octagon from the watermelon. This would be the ‘cake base’. Then I sliced the pineapple and cut out medium heart shapes which I used toothpicks to attach to the sides of the watermelon. I cut out smaller heart shapes from the sliced kiwi fruit and arranged them around the border on top of the watermelon, followed by the strawberries in the centre and blueberries to fill up the gaps. Lastly, I arranged the grapes at the bottom in one circle. Poked in a Happy Birthday tag on top and everything was done!
I was quite pleased with the end result though I felt there was room for improvement. I wanted to use cantaloupe (or rock melon) for the heart shapes on the sides but I couldn’t get any so I switched to pineapple and cookie cutting the pineapple was a nightmare as the flesh was so fibrous! Not recommended!
It’s pretty much free style to how you want to decorate the entire cake so just use your creativity and try with different fruits if you like.
Even though this cake didn’t satisfy our sweet tooth, this didn’t have any added sugar or carbs which would be perfect for anyone trying to watch his/her diet. Also suitable for diabetics as this will not cause a spike in blood sugar level. Healthy. Pretty. Photogenic. The husband was impressed and that mattered the most. Happy Birthday again, dear husband!
Geri, the ‘bake free’ fruit cake looks impressive. Very nice 🙂
Thanks Chitra 🙂
WOW! This fruit cake is really impressive ^^ how did you manage to cut such a big watermelon into this nice octagon.. >,> amazing~
With a big chopping board and cleaver! 🙂 I just sliced off the top and bottom first then lay it on the chopping board and slowly carve off the skin on the side to make an octagon. It helps by scoring gently on the top to draft out the octagon shape first to ensure even cutting. But because there was a lot of the whitish rind on the watermelon flesh, I had to keep trimming them off. A fat round watermelon would be easier I suppose as the one I got was slightly oval in shape, I had to cut off quite a lot just so the width could be consistent. Wasn’t perfect but it was good enough. The other fruits were able to hide any flaws 🙂