Watermelon Cupcakes

Okay, I’m going to preface this post with a note about how these cupcakes didn’t quite come out as planned. They weren’t a complete fail, but you’ll see what I mean.

While I perused on Pinterest, as you do, I saw a cute summer cupcake idea – make them look like watermelons! I’m not great at decorating so this idea using just food coloring and chocolate chips was perfect for me. Running with that idea, I went ahead and did it myself. I got cake mix, food coloring, and chocolate chips.

I made the batter as per instructions and then needed to dye it a light red so it would look like watermelon. I saw online that they suggest to mix red and yellow so that the red isn’t too dark. I could’ve used more red but I was afraid to make it too deep so it ended up being pink.

Then, I mixed in some chocolate chips. This is where the other “issue” came in. Many of them sank to the bottom when baking or just plain disappeared!

After baking the cupcakes, I mixed up the frosting as the cupcakes cooled. I got regular vanilla frosting and used some green food dye for the outside of the watermelon. As with the watermelon part, add a few drops at a time until you get to your desired color.

The green could’ve stood to be darker as well, but oh well.

Okay so, as you can see the melted chocolate bits were pretty small and all the way at the bottom. So after cutting it open to take a look, I stuck some more chocolate chips inside so I could get more chocolate bites! Definitely less than perfect, but still cute! Not sure how to prevent the chocolate chips from sinking. Maybe add them in after I’ve put the batter into the cupcake liners so they start out more towards the top rather than mixing them in? In any case, I think they still look cute and you can tell they’re supposed to be watermelons (at least I think you can) so that works!