Easter Bunny cakes ?

These bunny cakes are perfect for Easter – and the best  thing is it can be done out of any kind of cake; you can use chocolate cake with chocolate icing for dark bunnies, coconut cake with desiccated coconut for fluffy bunnies, or just victoria sponge with cream cheese icing for simple bunnies! I haven’t tried making them out of carrot cake yet – that’ll be next on my list of things to try – this weekend, hopefully!

Here is a simple victoria sponge recipe – feel free to make a different kind of cake as long as you use a round cake tin (or two if you’d like two bunnies).

For a simple victoria sponge cake, you will need:

• 225g caster sugar
• 225g self-raising flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 225g softened butter (at room temperature)
• 4 free-range eggs, beaten

Method (victoria sponge) :

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Break the eggs into a large mixing bowl, then sift in the sugar, flour, baking powder and butter.
3. Mix everything together – the easiest way to do this is with an electric hand mixer. Be careful not to over-mix – as soon as everything is blended then stop. The finished mixture should be of a soft ‘dropping’ consistency – it should fall off a spoon easily.
4. Grease and line two round cake tins with some butteruntil the sides and base are lightly coated (not too much – just enough to make it shiny!).
5. Divide the cake mixture evenly between the tins –  use a spatula to scrape the mixture from the bowl and gently smooth the surface of the cakes.
6. Place the tins on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 25 minutes.
7. The cakes are done when they’re golden-brown and coming away from the edge of the tins. Press them gently to check – they should be springy to the touch. Remove them from the oven and set aside to cool in their tins for five minutes. Then run a palette or rounded butter knife around the inside edge of the tin and carefully turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack.
8. To take your cakes out of the tins without leaving a wire rack mark on the top, put the clean tea towel over the tin, put your hand onto the tea towel and turn the tin upside-down. The cake should come out onto your hand and the tea towel – then you can turn it from your hand onto the wire rack.
9. Set aside to cool completely

Meanwhile, you can start making the icing!

Method (icing) :

Cream together the butter and cream cheese with a wooden spoon – don’t whip it as it will go too liquidy! Stir in the powdered sugar and vanilla essence and taste – add more sugar or vanilla extract if you prefer.

Now we can make the bunnies! Each round flat cake makes 1 bunny.

Assembling the bunny cakes:

1. Cut your round flat cake down the middle to create two semi circles.
2. Take one semi circle, bottom up, and smother with icing, then take the second semi circle and smother the bottom with icing, sticking it onto the first to create a double layered semi circle.
3. Using a long sharp knife, cut a notch out of the top – a bit like a tick: ✔. The semi circle should start to resemble a bunny’s body and head – minus the tail and ears.
4. Use the scrap you cut off (this should be an odd triangle shape) and use the longer bit to create two ears, and the shorter end to make a ball for the tail.
5. Prick the tail and ears in place with toothpicks, then gently cover the bunny’s head and body with cream cheese icing, and then the tail and ears too.
6. Cover with desiccated coconut. I used raisins for the eyes (held in place with toothpicks), but you can also stick on chocolate buttons.
7. Repeat with the other one if you are making two!