How To Make An Easy Easter Bunny Cake

Mar 19

Mar 19 How To Make An Easy Easter Bunny Cake

It’s my floppy, hoppy, Easter bunny cake! I spent this entire cake binge-watching Buffy in the background, listening to Anya sing out her bunny fear for all to hear. I bloody love it! Is it weird to have a giant Giles crush? Half worried about what that means and half just embracing it. Stuffy librarians with a posh accent are my jam. Gonna start scoping out the stacks on my next book stock up.

I finally feel like I’m making progress on the smooth buttercream front, it’s not perfect but it’s definitely coming along. Turns out all I needed was patience. Duh! I do that thing though when I feel like I can’t do something I just avoid it. So, I’d smooth the buttercream, it wouldn’t be perfect, and I’d run off and do something else. But, just keeping at it is what gets it smooth. Smoothing over, filling the patches, smoothing over. Lather, rinse, repeat. And (Brucie Bonus!) it’s kinda mesmerising. Watching the frosting, cleaning up the marks, clearing my mind. Pretty soothing stuff.

Inside this week I’ve got a little hot cross bun inspired cake mix, full of cinnamon, spice, currants and jam cos you can’t have a jam-less bun. Fact. Modified from the gorgeous Earl Grey cake by Benjamina Ebuehi I made last Christmas.

Ingredients

Cake

300g self-raising flour

300g sugar

220g butter

3 eggs

100g currants

250ml milk

8 Chai teabags

Decoration

375g butter

750g icing sugar

Splash of lemon juice

6 tbsp of raspberry jam

100g lilac fondant

100g pink fondant

100g green fondant

Food colouring – green, black and blue

Method

Bring 250ml of milk to the boil and remove from the heat. Soak 8 chai tea bags in the hot milk for 30 minutes with the lid on. After 30 minutes, remove the tea bags and squeeze any excess liquid into the pot. Cream together 300g of sugar and 220g of butter until pale and fluffy. Whisk in 3 eggs a little a time. Fold in half the flour. Add 100g of currants to the remaining flour and add the flour, currants and milk into the cake mix and gently fold together. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line two, 6-inch cake pans. Split the cake batter between the two lined pans and bake for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. When the cakes have cooled, cut each into two layers then wrap in cling film and place in the freezer.

Beat together 375g of softened butter, 750g of icing sugar and a large splash of lemon juice until pale and fluffy. If the buttercream is too stiff, beat in a little milk at a time until it’s nice and spreadable.

Remove the cakes from the freezer and build up the layers with buttercream and jam between. Place the cake in the fridge to set for 15 minutes. Remove the cake from the fridge and apply a crumb coat of buttercream all over. Return to the fridge for another 15 minutes. While the cake is chilling, colour the remaining buttercream turquoise green. Apply a thick layer of turquoise buttercream to the entire cake and use a bench scraper or palette knife to smooth the sides and top. When you’re happy, place the cake back in the fridge.

Cut out two bunny templates from parchment paper, one slightly larger than the other and with one ear bent. Cut these out and then measure them up against the side of the cake to check they will fit. If need be, trim to size.

Knead a small knob of butter into each different colour of fondant, working it until it becomes easier to handle. Roll the lilac fondant to 1mm thick and smooth the top with a fondant smoother. Place the larger bunny template on top and carefully cut around. Remove the parchment and neaten up the edges with a knife, then smooth around gently with your finger. Attach the bunny to the cake by misting the front of the cake with sterilised water. Repeat for the smaller bunny in pink. Roll up 2 little white balls of fondant and attach for the tails.

Roll out 100g of green fondant and cut into little blades of grass in different sizes. Mist the cake with a little sterilised water and add the grass all around. Mix a drop of green gel food colouring with a spot of vodka or cake alcohol, paint onto the grass to give it a little depth. Next, do the same with black food colouring but this time paint outlines around the bunnies and the grass. With the outline complete, wet a clean paintbrush with alcohol and tap off the excess, brush over the inside edge of the outlines to blend the line, repeat as many times as necessary.