Watermelon Crawl- Aka Spiked Watermelon

Mama's Kitchen (Hope)'s Note:

Sure to make your picnic a LOT more interesting or the Hempstead, TX Watermelon Festival! Here are three ways to achieve this dastardly deed. I prefer rum over vodka for this but champagne is nice too especially with the open and honest method. UPDATE: I tried this recently with Vanilla Vodka and OMG! It was FAB! BUT FIRST- Rinse the whole melon to remove any dirt or icky stuff that might be on the skin- seen or unseen! ewwww!!!! I never used to do this part until I saw a large dog "marking" the watermelons! EWWWWWWW! NOW I wash them VERY WELL! ugh! Now all that is left to do is to choose which method you would like to use! Cooking time does not include the hours of cooling. Have a great time!

• Total Time: 15 mins
• Prep Time: 15 mins
• Cook Time: 0 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 20-25

Yield: 1.0 spiked ...

• 1 watermelon
• 750 ml rum or 750 ml vanilla vodka or 750 ml coconut rum

Directions:

1. Sneaky and Underhanded: Use any size syringe - or several- and inject the alcohol into the melon. Smaller needles will leave the least detectable marks! lol Refrigerate or pack in ice to get it really cold. (Very hard to do with champagne).
2. Open and Honest: Remove rind from melon. Cut edible flesh into pieces, place in a huge bowl and douse with the alcohol. Refrigerate or pack in ice to get it really cold.
3. Whole Melon: Cut a hole in the melon big enough to insert a funnel. SAVE the piece you removed to reinsert after all the alcohol has been absorbed. Pour alcohol into the melon through the funnel. We usually put the melon in a cooler and surround it with ice, place the funnel and fill it with alcohol- return several times to refill funnel.
4. Note: We usually spike in the morning and let it sit until we are ready later that day. If leaving the rind on, don't let it sit too long as the outer rind of the melon will absorb much of the alcohol and the inner fruit will be a little weaker.
5. PS I LOVE lots of the 'flavored' or infused alcohols they have available now BUT SAVE THEM for a drink. When I used them in this they were really gross with the melon. The exception being Coconut Rum. Steer clear of all those other flavors like banana, mango, etc -- .

Reviews

[Margaritalady]

Watermelon and coconut rum -- an excellent flavor combination! Made this for Jimmy Buffett concert and will make again!

[Maito]

This recipe is really fun. We used method 2 and tried three different batches with coconut rum, gin, and Grand Marnier. The Grand Marnier one was the hands down favorite! Next time we want to try it with tequila too. Thanks!

[BuckeyeFan]

Another option is coconut rum. It's what we always use.