How to Make a Delicious 4th of July Watermelon Bombe

Although the watermelon – or Citrullus Lanatus, a native of the Kalahari Desert located deep down in the south of Africa – is commonly thought of as a fruit, it is actually classified as a vegetable. Besides its bitter peel, the watermelon is composed of 92 percent water. The other eight percent of this tasty vegetable is fructose, or fruit sugar.

The watermelon bombe, however, has nothing to do with the watermelon you keep in your pantry. It is neither a fruit nor a vegetable, and it may have a slightly higher sugar content. The watermelon bombe is a delicious ice-cream dessert with a beautiful shape and a surprise on the inside. It may not taste much like your average watermelon, but it sure looks like one.

Styles of Watermelon Bombe

In general, a bombe is a summer-specific dessert made by layering different flavors of ice-cream or sherbet onto a mold to create a beautiful pattern. Bombes can be made out of hundreds of different combinations of many different flavors of ice-cream. Your imagination is the limit. However, because the watermelon bombe is such a clever, fun idea, it has become one of the most popular desserts to serve at traditional holiday celebrations, such as the 4th of July.

Although on the outside a watermelon bombe may look like a simple mound of green ice-cream, it opens up to a delicious, watermelon-red inside with crunchy chocolate chip “seeds.” This freezing cold illusion is a great way to finish off your 4th of July picnic. Here’s a simple watermelon bombe recipe that you can use for your 4th of July celebrations.

Freezing Time

Keep in mind that, although the ice-cream or sherbet needs to be soft when you begin work on this creation, when served it needs to have hardened up again. This recipe is best put together the day before it will be served with fresh ingredients from your supermarket. A day in the freezer should give the ice-cream enough time to freeze solid again.

Steps

Use as your mold a rounded metal bowl that can hold about one and a half quarts of ice-cream. Line this bowl with aluminum foil and press softened but not melted lime sherbet into a half circle around the bottom. Freeze this preliminary preparation until it becomes solid again.

Spread another layer of ice-cream around the bottom of your bowl. This time use pineapple sherbet or some other flavor that comes in a yellow or white color. Freeze again.

While your mold is re-freezing, take a softened ice-cream flavor that is pink-ish in color – raspberry sherbet works well for this layer – and mix enough chocolate chips into it so that it looks like it is dotted with seeds. Put this mixture into the center of your mold, cover the mix with plastic wrap, and freeze it for about eight hours. Make sure your watermelon bombe is extremely firm before serving.

To serve this tasty watermelon-esque dessert, place a serving platter onto the top of your ice-cream-filled mold and quickly turn it upside down. To the untrained eye, your stealth bombe will now look like a mound of green ice-cream on a platter – that is, until it is cut into wedges and devoured.