Watermelon Fire Engine

Something I've wanted to do for a few years now is make a watermelon truck or train. The occasion of Young Sir's 3rd birthday seemed like a good time to give it a try.

Krista made  a really cute dinosaur cake which he loved.  I’m not against cake and icing for birthdays, but when else would I have the opportunity to carve a truck out of fruit?

I didn’t have a really solid idea of how this was going to work out, but worse case scenario - I’d have to eat some oddly shaped watermelon pieces. It was a risk I was willing to take.

I had a Lego truck which I used for reference. You'll notice my watermelon truck looks nothing like it.

In the end, it provided me 40 minutes of sticky fun and a slightly lopsided truck which Young Sir quite enjoyed. Little Miss thought the strawberry light on top was particularly delicious.

So here’s how it went:

First I bought a bunch of fruit.
I didn't use it all. But I didn't know that when I took the picture.

Cut to make a flat side so you have a stable melon to slice.

Keep cutting away the rind.
To be honest, at this point I wasn't 100% sure where this was going.

Once the rind was removed, I imagined a truck in there somewhere.
 Moment of truth. I cut the melon.
1/3 would be the cab. 2/3 would be the back end.

I just kept cutting to reveal a rectangular cube.
There was a lot of juice that just kept coming out through the whole process.
I fiddled quite a bit to get everything to square up.

Once I had the back end mostly square, I cut the 1/3 piece into 2 slabs and one cube.
I measured off the back end to make sure they'd be the same width.
Well, "measured" is maybe an overly optimistic description.

After a bit of experimenting and making sure things were square, the longer slab became the chassis.
I piled a shorter slab on top.
The final piece was the cab. I tried to shape it a bit - but it's mostly just a square.
The wheels are the center cuts of prune plums.
A toothpick through a champagne grape and strawberry slice added a bit of pizzazz to the wheels.

Ok. This is a really blurry picture, but it shows how I suddenly realized I had to make sure it didn't fall apart and used toothpicks to keep the front end stacked.
The strawberry on top is the red light. The blueberries are not traditionally found on fire engines, but they looked cool.
Everything is attached with toothpicks.

The honeydew was for the doors, windows and ladder.
I started slicing longitudinally along one side to get even slices.
My reasoning was that if I cut it in half, I'd end up with the hole and the seeds and that wasn't the shape I was going for.

Trimmed the rind off the pieces and used these slabs to make the doors and windows.

I used a sharp paring knife to cut away bits of melon and make the ladder.

I added some honeydew for detail along the sides and put lights on the back.
If you're observant, you'll notice that I moved the ladder. Originally I had it hanging off the side, but when I looked at the Lego model, I figured the ladder on top would be more interesting.
The bottom ladder is attached with a toothpick and the back end of the rail is cut at a 45º angle so the two pieces of ladder fit together.
I shoved the toothpicks from the standy-uppy ladder part straight up into the bottom ladder's rails.