watermelon bomb

It's summer and who wants to turn the oven on? I sure don't! In lieu of a birthday cake for a friend, we recently made an ice cream watermelon bomb a la Martha Stewart. It was so good! (I did have to turn the oven on to make the sponge cake, but only for 30 minutes or so....)

Martha has a very precise way of constructing this bomb, I, on the other hand am a little less particular, but one thing's for certain, you must START A DAY OR TWO BEFORE YOU WANT TO SERVE IT!

Ingredients:
enough red ice cream to fill the bowl (see recommendations below)
enough white and green ice cream to line the bowl
2 -3 c chocolate graham cracker, broken up
1 round vanilla cake (size depends on the size of your bowl)
1 c (approx.) raspberry jam or lemon curd (opt.)
1 T lemon zest (opt.)

First:
Decide on your favorite green colored ice cream, I prefer lime sherbet
Second:
Decide on your favorite white colored ice cream, this one's easy, vanilla
Third:
Decide on your favorite pink colored ice cream, raspberry sherbet is awesome
Fourth:
make a round sponge cake, I made this one and it worked fine, however the cornstarch-in-a-cake-thing was odd to me, so any old yellow cake will do...


Make watermelon 'rind':
find a deep bowl, (martha says a 3 quart bowl will do) about the size of a giant watermelon cut in half. line it with saran wrap. soften the green ice cream, with a large spatula or spoon dump it into the bowl and smear it up the sides of the bowl...you're making the watermelon rind, work with me here...


once you have the green layer in place, put bowl into freezer to harden a bit. take the white ice cream out of freezer and soften it a bit, repeat what you did with the green ice cream, you're making the inner rind of the watermelon now, when finished, put bowl in freezer to harden...


Layer cake:
carefully slice vanilla cake in half and smooth on a layer of your filling of choice. I used raspberry jam combined with 1 T lemon zest, however lemon curd (or the filling for my lemon lime tart) would be delicious. 


Make watermelon 'filling':
now make the 'watermelon' part: dump softened pink ice cream into a separate bowl, sprinkle broken up graham crackers into the bowl (these are the watermelon seeds), mix well, remove bowl from freezer, dump this mixture into the rind-lined bowl and place the cake on top of it, press down. cover with saran wrap and put in freezer. 


To serve:
invert bowl on to a serving plate, press a warm dishtowel on bowl bottom, (repeat as needed), pull bowl off of bomb, remove saran wrap and use a knife soaked in hot water to slice through cake....enjoy!