Cook with Arthy shama: Watermelon-look alike cake/ fondant sponge cake

I love to bake.... baking, not only ends up with an beautiful, gorgeous end-product, but also relaxes my mind and eases the day. (Now, let us forget about the sink getting loaded with lots of dirty vessels.... and the overall messy work, LOL) Though, I would love to bake all the time, my regret is not on the cost I had spent, but on the consumption part. Since, we are an family of three (I would say, two and an half :D ) I can't proceed to my next bake, untill and unless my previous one got completely out of stock.

So, when my sambhar cake disappeared, I was wondering what to proceed. So, when I explored my refrigerator, my eyes shined gloriously over the cling wrapped fondant. Yes, this fondant is very special to me, since I experimented myself, with stocked on condensed milk. Isn't that exciting? I, dragged this fondant and along with icing colours played an little to create this magical watermelon look-alike cake. Basically, there is no watermelon(Beleive me, not even an drop of essence or juice), but an sponge cake topped with fondant to create an fake look. Though I am not uploading details of fondant here, I promise to get back soon with an detailed post :)

Tastewise, they were perfect. This is the first time, I am trying sponge cake. Sponge cake is an very rich , creamy cake with an equal ratios of butter, flour, eggs and sugar. Since Shama had brought me recently Nova kitchen-weigher, I could not find an better opportunity to explore :P :P This cake reminded me of bakery-brought ones and chocolate buttons (Which I added, to get that seed effect) added an nice crunch. I, have also explained below how to colour coconut and use them as sprinklers. You can also use the same methodology to colour sugar granules and use them instead of fondant.

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Baking time: 35 minutes
Serves: 6-8

Ingredients required:

For sponge cake

125 gm or 3/4 cup + 1 tbspn of unsalted butter
125 gm or 3/4 cup of castor sugar
125 gm or 11/4 cups of APF/ All purpose flour
125 gm or 2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 tsp of red colour
1/2 cup of chocolate buttons (which I quartered to get an 'seed' effect, you might also replace them with chocolate chips)
1 tsp Baking powder
2 tbspn of milk

For topping

Green coloured fondant
White coloured fondant
1/2 cup of dessicated coconut
Pinch of green icing colour

Method

Sift flour along with baking powder thrice, add colour and keep this dry mixture aside.

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degree celsius.

Place butter, sugar and essence in an dry vessel and mix well. Lateron, crack open the eggs one by one and stir them into creamed mixture. You can also add an tsp of flour in between in order to avaoid curdling.

Now, fold in our dry mixture along with chocolate chips. If the batter appears too thick, you can dilute an bit by adding milk. Pour this batter of dropping consistency into an greased tray.

Bake at first 20 minutes for 200 degree celsius, and lower temperature to 150 degree celsius and bake for another fifteen minutes. Cake is done till an inserted wet skewer/toothpick comes out clean. Allow this to cool over wire-rack.

As it cools, place your coconut into an ziploc bag and introduce an grilled stick, (which is filled with icing leaf green colour) into bag. After wiping off colour, close the bag and squeeze the colour uniformly throughout the coconut.