My Sad Attempt at Watermelon Cupcakes

I made Minnie Mouse themed cupcakes last week (blogged in a previous post). That was my trial run at themed cupcakes. I love themes. I love themed birthday parties, holiday themed things, seasonal, anything with a theme, really. So Minnie was a great first theme. Easy to make chocolate cupcakes, even though I've never baked cupcakes before. Easy to put pink strawberry frosting on top, stick white chocolate chips in it, and easy to twist Oreos and use the non cream side as ears - just stick them into cupcakes after being frosted. Bam. Done. It was so easy, I was ready for something more challenging (I thought). This time I wanted more of a purpose for going all out on a cupcake. I though, hey! - my sister loves watermelons and watermelon themed things and it's also summer time - watermelons fit summer time theme and I can show them to my sister and give some to her! Perfect idea.

Image in my head

I made the cupcake mix and put in some red food dye. Mixed in some chocolate chips with it too and then poured it out into paper liners in the pan. The mix was a little more liquidly than the Minnie ones were. I thought something seemed a little off about it, so I added a little more flour. Still didn't feel quite right, but I shrugged it off and threw them in the oven. 22 minutes later and they were ready to come out. The chocolate chips, the "seeds", were not visible through the paper liner, which was a bit dissappointing. That was one of the main effects I was going for to make it look like watermelon. I decided to let them cool and would take off the paper lining after so you could see the seeds in the red cake better. When time came to do that though, the paper stuck right to the cake and it looked horrible. So, I frosted the cupcakes with their liners on and tried to make them still look somewhat resemblant to watermelon. I experimented, tried out different ways that they could maybe still pull it off. I got frustrated and ended up with this assembly:

This is a watermelon with the seeds on the outside...  

This is a "tall, grassy hill with poop droppings all over it"
according to my boyfriend, Adam. 

This is happy watermelon Steve. He's just happy to be here. 

This is happy watermelon Harold. 

And this is what happened after I tasted one. They were really, quite awful. Adam agrees.