Messy Melons

Hello Hello Hello! I am so excited that Pinstrosity is up and running again. I am super stoked about our plan for the year and for you all to get to know Rachel (if you missed her intro, check it out here). This is going to be a great year! My last real post feels like it was forever and ever ago, perhaps even a whole separate life. Since then Darrow has finally started to gain good weight and life is a little less zombie like. For a while we looked like this around here...

...well, maybe we still do sometimes. But life is good! I really don't have any complaints. Frustrations, yes (what parent doesn't?!)...but complaints, no. We love our little guy! 

Okay, maybe I still look a little zombie-esque, but I am happy and content with life, and that is such a wonderful feeling! 

Okay...enough with pictures of my offspring (I promise I won't shove pictures of him at you in every post) and on to the real reason you all are here. The Pinstrosities. Oh, yes! 

How many of you have been eyeing this pin?

http://www.paleocupboard.com/watermelon-cake.html

I have been wanting to make this SO bad, and I don't even like watermelon or almonds! It just looks heavenly, and scrumptious, and perfect. But would it really be worth making? Is it too pretty to be true? It's on my Summer 2014 To Do list (because watermelon just aren't readily available in New Mexico in the middle of winter), but lucky for you all, Krissy tested this out for us and we get to find out what it's like now!

Krissy found this idea and thought it was worth giving a try (not for the paleo-ness, but for the coolness factor). She ordered what she needed from the super market (Can you do that here in the states?! That would be awesome!), but they failed to deliver exactly what she needed. Rather than a full watermelon she ended up with a quarter watermelon and had to use an angular chunk rather than a round chunk. As she wasn't too worried about making her "cake" Paleo compliant at all, she used regular whipped cream rather than the coconut cream and said it would have been fine, "but, really, I was just in too much of a rush and piled the cream on too hastily. I had so much cream on the sides, I had to toothpick the kiwi fruit on at first." Then it came time to decorate. "By decorating time, I had stopped referring to the online image and was sort of just going with my memory… I didn’t realise how dreadful mine looked until much later. It was actually well-received by my family. I am glad they didn’t see the online image."

The Pinstrosity

Is anyone else seeing an owl face in the cake? No? Oh well. 

Krissy said, "The verdict in tastiness was that it looked better than it tasted as the flavours were a bit muddled. Personally, I enjoyed it, but hey, it was the fruits of my labour, so I am biased." Hehe, I laughed at the "fruits of my labour" line...she's punny! 

This would be a hard dessert to get just right in the flavor department. If you're luckily enough to happen on fruit that is just bursting with flavor, then this should all be pretty dang good. But if you happen to have my luck with picking fruit, they'll all be a little over ripe, or under ripe, or just bland, and then it'll just taste like mediocre fruit salad. I imagine with all the best fruit, this has such a good and refreshing flavor! I won't know until this summer though (cross your fingers for the next 5-6 months my fruit choosing capabilities get better). 

Ideas are running through my head right now as I am thinking of making these. Whipped cream cheese fruit dip as the "frosting". Trying the whipped coconut cream as per the recipe. Candied pecans rather than almonds. A sprinkling of chocolate shavings. I'm definitely drifting from the Paleo idea...but then again I've always known I wouldn't make a good cave-person.