If you love to bake, we know you’re going to want to find the perfect recipes as the weather gets warmer. And what better cupcakes for summer than these watermelon cupcakes? A little tangy and a little sweet, this is a recipe that’s certain to surprise your family, friends, and guests. Take them to a picnic and watch the smiles pop out!
This watermelon cupcake recipe not only taste amazing, but they look adorable, too—like little pieces of fruit in cupcake form. That’s a double-win in our book! Best of all, they don’t require a lot of prep or much skill in baking. The only unusual ingredient you’ll need is a little bit of watermelon-flavored jello mix!
Let’s make this summer wonderful with a bit of watermelon magic…
Watermelon Cupcakes Recipe: Ingredients & Utensils
Serves: 24 cupcakes
Prep Time: 10 min
Bake Time: 12-14 min
Ingredients
- 1 box white cake mix
- 1 small box (3.4 oz) watermelon flavored jello
- 1 cup buttermilk or milk
- ½ cup oil
- 4 large eggs, room temperature
- Pink food coloring, optional
- ½ cup mini chocolate chips plus more for decoration
- Frosting of your choice
- Sprinkles (we suggest our Melon Cooler mix!)
If you are looking for a from scratch recipe, try adding the jello mix to our vanilla cupcakes recipe.
Utensils & Other Items
- Cupcake liners (we suggest our striped lime greaseproof liners!)
- Cupcake pan
- Large mixing bowl
- Toothpick
- Wire rack
- Piping bags
How To Make Watermelon Cupcakes
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F or temperature on the cake mix box instructions and add the cupcake liners to the pan.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the cake mix and watermelon jello.
- Add eggs, buttermilk, and oil. Mix until completely smooth.
- If using food coloring, add a few drops and mix until you get the desired color.
- Fold in chocolate chips.
- Divide batter into cupcake liners.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 12-14 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Cool completely on a wire rack.
- Decorate with frosting of your choice and add mini chocolate chips to the top.
Watermelon Cupcakes: Tips For Decoration
If you want some inspiration for your watermelon cupcake recipe, you’re in luck! We’ve assembled a few decoration suggestions right here for you.
As we’ve said above, we’ve chosen to use striped lime cupcake liners and our Melon Cooler sprinkles mix. However, you can also use…
For sprinkles:
- Berry Bliss mix
- Melon Ball mix
- Oh Lolly mix
- Green, light green, pink, or black sugar crystals
- Black, green, light green, or pink jimmies
- Alternatively, you can leave the sprinkles off all together and just use the chocolate chips as “seeds” on the top of the cupcake!
For cupcake liners:
- Any of our other gorgeous lime-colored liners, like solid or dotted
- Pink liners would also work, like our rugby striped ones
We left the frosting up to you, but if you need suggestions or recipes, you can take a look at all of our frosting posts here. In particular, we recommend putting together our simple buttercream frosting recipe.
Watermelon Cupcakes: Tips & Tricks
Here are other tips and tricks about making these cupcakes!
- Use lime/light green food coloring on the cake mix if you want green cupcakes!
- Watermelon Kool-Aid mix also works in place of watermelon jello mix.
- We’ve also heard that adding pureed watermelon to the frosting is quite delicious, but haven’t tried it ourselves…experiment time!
- You can also use a little teeny-tiny bit of red food coloring instead of pink food coloring to tinge your frosting the right color. (We say “teeny-tiny” because if you add too much, you’ll end up with red frosting…which is fine if that’s what you’re going for, but it may make your cupcakes look Christmas-y! We suppose you could pull off a “Christmas in July” theme then, though!)
Did you enjoy this watermelon cupcake recipe?
Aren’t these the most perfect cupcakes for summer you’ve ever seen? We’d love to see how you made them, including if you left the chocolate chips “seeds” in or not. This would make a super cute watermelon cake recipe too!
If you are looking to put these with a One in a Melon party theme or summer pool party, check out our matching Party Supplies and Tablescape posts for a fully decorated event. Shop all of our melon themed party supplies in the shop.
We have lots more to discover on Sweets & Treats blog!
Our cupcake recipes are out of this world, and we want to share more with you! Here’s a few other cupcakes you’ll loooove…
- Carrot Cake Cupcakes
- Coconut Marshmallow Cupcakes
- Apple Pie Cupcakes
- Cookies and Cream Cupcakes
- Orange Creamsicle Cuppies
2 comments
I am going to try to make this recipe. I will let you know how it turns out. Thank you
Yay! Can’t wait to hear how it comes out. It’s perfect for summer!