Of all the joyous food discoveries I have made on the world wide web lately – this has to be my favorite: Watermelon. In the shape of a cake. The presentation beats the heck out of chopped up fruit salad in a bowl!

If you want to impress folks at your next summer potluck, you must make this “cake.” I made this thinking of my co-blogger Anne. After all, she once did some catering under the name “Belly Laughs,” and loves food that makes you smile. As Exhibit “A” to prove my theory, I offer Anne’s Mammo-grahams. Case closed.

I have been dying to try this idea since I saw it on Blogher a few weeks ago. All of us “ooohed” and “ahhhed” over it but we just couldn’t bear to cut up something this pretty, and so we just ate the bowl of scraps left over from making it. We decided to take it to a neighbor. Her text to me: “Are you kidding me? You are my kind of friend!”

I was worried that this “cake” would require a big investment in time and several boxes of toothpicks. Not so. There is only one toothpick in the entire “cake,” and that is to keep the jicama star on the very top in place. You could skip the star if you don’t have any toothpicks around. The rest of the fruit garnishes magically stick to the very sweet and wet watermelon. This took me about 20 minutes to put together from start to finish, and I will be taking this to every barbecue this summer. Easy. Fun. Real Fruit. What’s not to love about this?

To make a replica of this “cake” – these are the steps I used: 1) Cut three rounds of watermelon about four inches thick. One 8 inches in diameter, one 6 inches and one four inches. Stack them on top of each other on a 12 inch serving platter. 2) Cut some 1/4 inch slices of kiwi. Cut some slices of jicama about 1/4 inch thick, then use a star cookie cutter and cut out stars. Cut some grapes into 1/4 inch rounds. Cut pineapple into 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch squares. Cut a few strawberries in half. 3) Assemble as shown above. Trust me on this – the fruit will adhere without any toothpicks used (except for the star on the top).

You can watch a fun video on how to put together your own fresh fruit creation on You Tube, and check out all kinds of watermelon cakes.

Can you think of a better way to celebrate summer fruit? I can’t.

— posted by Donna