For Easter last year, I baked a bunny cake for my younger cousins as we usually have the family over for a big feast and this year will be no different. Well, ideally, it’ll look a little less like roadkill and more like the adorable furball I want it to be! Anyways, the finish isn’t important, it’s all about the taking part and being unnecessarily ambitious in your bakes to make the little ones happy!
All you need is a trusty chocolate cake recipe (see below if you don’t have one,) some butter cream, fondant, marzipan or a ‘roll-able’ icing of your choice and a load of decorations depending on your design. I usually search Instagram or Pinterest for inspiration before buying my ingredients. This year, I want to create a 3D golden bunny holding a real Easter egg, but I’ll let you all know how that goes. You’ll find that you start super ambitious before realising the bunny ears are far too difficult to get to stick up, so you’ll jab a load of toothpicks in, then try different positions and might only end up with one ear, but that’s okay! The design will adapt! To help you with your bakes, you might want:
A 3D baking tin – you can get tins online in all sorts of shapes including a bunny
A tiny pallet knife – to help get the butter cream on in annoying nooks
Mini eggs – key to hiding any little mistakes
Gold leaf – To make it super fancy (you can get the fake stuff for a bit cheaper for the same look. I plan on using this to conceal my dodgy buttercream job, then scratching into it to give some sort of ‘fur-like’ effect!
You basically just wing it, at the end of the day, everyone gets a yummy cake regardless of what it looks like! I’ll be sharing pictures of this year’s bake on Instagram @ucbloggers and my foodie account, @misffood! I shall keep you all posted, keep your fingers crossed for my little bunny!
CHOCOLATE CAKE RECIPE
200g dark chocolate
200g butter
1 tbsp instant coffee (dissolved)
85g self-raising flour
85g plain flour
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
200g light muscovado sugar
200g golden caster sugar
25g cocoa powder
3 medium eggs
75ml buttermilk
No tricks, just chuck it all in a mixer until mixed, then bake for 1 hour – 1 hour 30 mins on 160 degrees!