I recently went for a holiday to Thailand – mainly Phuket & Krabi. Apart from all the sun, sea & sand, what made me happy were the variety of fruits we ate! Watermelon, pineapple, mango, dragon fruit to name a few. The weather back home is cold & gloomy, and I wanted to relive the freshness and sweetness of fruits. It reminded me of a video I had seen earlier – how to make these watermelon sugar cookies. The idea stuck and these are the results 🙂

These are your basic sugar cookies or French sablé or shortbread cookies – giving room for a lot of shapes and icings. You can use any of your trusted sugar cookies recipes here. The cookie dough is really easy to make with basic ingredients, the creativity comes in with the colouring and shaping the dough into a watermelon-looking cookie that’s tasty to eat and is delightful to look at 🙂

Posting some pictures from my holiday to get you in beach mode as well 😀

Ingredients –

Unsalted Butter – 120 grams (a little more than 1/2 cup) at room temperature
Granulated sugar – 240 grams (a little more than 1 cup)
1 large egg
Vanilla essence – 1 tsp
Salt – 1/2 tsp
All-purpose flour – 390 grams (a little more than 3 cups) (sifted along with salt)
Milk (room temperature) 2-3 tbsp
Gel food colours – red & green
Some Mini Chocolate Chips

Procedure – 

1. Using a hand mixer/whisk, cream together butter and sugar for about 5-7 minutes until light & fluffy.
2. Add the egg & vanilla. Mix until well combined.
3. Add half the flour and 1 tbsp milk and mix until combined. Add the remaining flour & milk and mix.
4. Take the mix onto a surface and bring it all together in sort of a dough. Cover it and chill it for 30 minutes.
5. Divide the mixture into half. The first half will be tinted red. Divide the other half again into 2 parts, one to be tinted green and other to be kept white.
6. Prepare your red dough & green dough by adding 2-3 drops of gel food colour. Mix well.
7. Roll the red dough into a cylindrical log. Wrap the dough with cling wrap and keep in the freezer for 45-60 minutes to firm it up. Keep the log vertical and standing up so that you don’t mess up the shape.

8. Next, take the white dough. If it’s too soft, chill it for 15 minutes. Roll it to about 1 cm thickness between 2 parchment papers so that’s easier to roll and doesn’t stick to rolling pin. Make sure it’s big enough to wrap around your red log. If there are creases, remove the parchment at the end and use the rolling pin to iron them out. Keep it in the fridge for 15 minutes to firm up a little.
9. Take out the red dough and using the parchment paper, carefully wrap the white dough over the red and stick nicely. If the dough isn’t enough to cover the whole log, trim the edges of the white dough and use it to patchwork and then smoothen it out by rolling it slightly. Wrap it again in cling wrap and chill it for 45-60 minutes.

10. Repeat the same with the green dough. Roll it to about 1 cm thickness, wrap it around the log and roll it slightly so that the layer sticks and smoothens out any patchwork. Wrap it again and chill it for 45-60 minutes.

11. Using a very sharp knife, trim the sides of the cookie roll. Use one single motion instead of going back and forth.
12. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
13. Cut about 5-10 mm thick slices from the roll. Cut them into half to get the semi-circle cookies. Stick the mini chocolate chips into the red part of cookies to replicate the seeds.

14. Bake these cookies for 10-12 minutes. If you are baking in batches, pop the rest of the uncooked cookies into the fridge to keep them chill.
15. Remove from tray to wire racks to cool completely.