Lovely Little Bunny Cakes for Easter

I do hope all of you have enjoyed a beautiful Easter Sunday. Such a lovely day here in southwest Oklahoma. The sun is shining, the tulips are blooming, and the lavender is showing the first signs of spring green. And, it would be remiss of me if I didn't share our traditional bunny cakes with you. Lovely, cute, adorable little bunny cakes. My Mom made these when we were growing up, and I've just continued the tradition with my own kids.

They can be as easy, or as complicated, as you like. Personally, I use a cake mix, and canned frosting, which opens up a very broad range of flavor combinations for you to play with, depending on your favorites. You can have a chocolate bunny with chocolate frosting, or a white bunny with white frosting, or a lemon bunny with lemon frosting, or a german chocolate bunny, or a carrot cake bunny with cream cheese frosting, or a scratch white cake with fluffy 7 Minute Frosting, buttercream frosting, chocolate ganache...well...you get the idea. They sky's the limit.

And decorating your bunny can be simple, or fancy, fun, or funky, depending on what your personal style is. I've drawn flowers, polka dots, swirls, sprinkled with colored sugar, colored sprinkles, coconut, toasted nuts, shaved chocolate, and on and on.

And then there's the fillings. Lemon curd, lime curd, jams, or preserves of every type, raspberry, strawberry, apricot, peach, and so forth and so on.

Today, I made some scrumptious combinations. There is always chocolate, for the two that love chocolate, then there is white for those of us that like white, me included. Today there were some twists to the norm. Not only did I make mini bunny cakes, which is soooo much fun for a darling individual presentation, but I added lavender syrup and strawberry preserves to the filling of the big white bunny, and it turned out so yummy! And raspberry preserves to the filling of a small bunny, who then got coated with icing and pink coconut. He was so scrumptious!

So here's how you do it. Mix up a cake mix of your choice like normal, and bake in 2 round cake pans. I use the 9 inch because I don't like my bunnies to be too fat. (Those of you who know me know I like the icing more than the cake!) You can use the 8 inch, or you can make all mini bunnies in the Wilton 4 or 5 inch cake pans. Doesn't matter. It's whatever you want.

Once the cakes have cooled I generally roll the crumbs off so they don't get in the icing. Sometimes I have to do a crumb layer and freeze the bunny before putting on the rest of the icing. Depends on the recipe. Anyway, cut your circle in half. If you eyeball it, it's a good idea to stand the half circles up next to each other to make sure you cut straight. If not, lay one layer on top of the other and trim until they are even.

Now, the filling. You can spread the filling, in this case jam, on one half, and put the icing on the other and sandwich together. Or you can mix the icing and the filling, giving it a nice tint. For the lavender/strawberry I just mix the lavender syrup in the strawberry preserves before spreading.

After you sandwich them firmly together, stand up your half rounds. At this point I generally decide what I will be serving them on and place the cake on that, with wax paper strips under the edges to keep the plate clean.

Now you eyeball your half round and cut a chunk out of one end, forming the head. The chunk now becomes the tail, attached with a bit of icing.

Then ice your bunny all over. Remove waxed paper, if you used it, and decorate your bunny as desired. In this case, the bunny with the lavender/strawberry filling got some purple flowers. You're almost done!

Cut ears out of paper, in this case I used white copy paper and colored the center lightly with pink, and stick the ears in like so.

And now for the face. You can simply use jelly beans, or you can tint icing and add blue eyes and a pink nose, or whatever color eyes and nose you want. Whiskers are optional, in this case they were just cut from paper, but I've used toothpicks, and also drawn them on.

Aren't they darling?! Sometimes I nestle them on green tinted coconut with jelly beans sprinkled around, and sometimes I nestle them on store bought cotton candy. (I've also used that for a fluffy tail, too!) Sometimes I ice one round with green icing and put the bunny on that...well I could go on and on with ideas, but hey...

let's eat some bunny cake!

Blessings,
Cathy