1. Easter Bunny Cake recipe (1950)
A feather in your Easter bonnet — this luscious Easter bunny cake… Best cake you’ve baked in a month of Easter Sundays… and you… yes, you… can take all the glory!
Ingredients
1/2 cup Dexo (shortening)
2-1/4 cups sifted cake flour
3 teaspoons double-action baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1% cups sugar
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs, unbeaten
Directions
Measure shortening into bowl. Sift dry ingredients onto shortening. Add vanilla to milk. Add 2/3 of the milk.
Blend and beat 1 minute (count at least 150 strokes per minute). Add remaining 1/3 milk. Add eggs. Beat 2 minutes. Bake in two greased and floured deep 8-inch layer pans in moderate oven, 375° F for 25 to 30 minutes.
When cool, frost with butter frosting. Color coconut green, using vegetable coloring. Place on top of cake.
Arrange Easter candy bunny on coconut. Decorate with colored jelly beans.
Bake Swan’s Down Yellow Cake Mix in two 8-inch layers, following directions on package. Make Easy Chocolate Frosting, using the recipe on the back of the blue and yellow package of Baker’s Unsweetened Chocolate.
1. Cut each cake layer in two, about 1/4-inch off-center. This will make two large and two smaller pieces.
2. Place these four pieces together with frosting between them, the smaller pieces on the outside. Stand them upright, cut sides down, on a cake plate.
3. Trim the outside pieces at the top outer edges to help round off sides of cake for egg shape.
4. Then trim off lower ends of outside pieces, slicing diagonally, to give cake an oval shape at base.
Cover the whole mound with remaining frosting, filling in to make an egg shape. Decorate with white and tinted frosting and jelly beans. Make a nest of green-tinted Baker’s Coconut around egg. To serve, cut across the egg, making four-layer slices of cake.
When I go to a family reunion, or maybe church homecoming, THIS is the type of Coconut Cake I want to see on the dessert table. One look, and you can tell it was made by a dear, older Mother or Grandmother, that’s been baking for years. Sure, she wants it to look good, but she’s more concerned about how it tastes.
There might have been a day, years ago, when she could make her cake look like something in a bakery window. Now, the years have taken a toll on her body. Her hands shake a bit these days, as she adjusts layers and spreads the icing. Her legs just don’t have the strength to stand at her table, and work and fuss with it like she once did. She has to take frequent breaks lately, just to rest awhile, so she can work on it a little bit more.
As a young child, she learned how to make this cake standing beside her own mother. She’s never used a recipe, but now, her mind continues to wonder if she’s somehow forgotten a key ingredient.
All through the years, she’s heard people talk about how great her cakes are. She just smiles, often looking downward as if embarrassed, but her heart is made happy as she tenderly says, “Thank You.”
Out the corner of their eye, everybody seems to watch when they realize her cake is being brought in. Some even strain their neck a bit, to see exactly where it gets placed among the others on the long table. You know hers will be the first empty cake plate on that table, and you have already schemed up a plan to get a slice. Heaven forbid if someone should take the last piece before you get yours.
My mother made a great Coconut Cake, one that was similar to this one. Her icing was more of a clear type and you could clearly see the layers beneath that frosting and the layer of coconut spread on top. In the earlier years, she always used a fresh coconut, grating it by hand. She would always hand me the small leftover pieces that she didn’t grate, and that was like pure candy in my book.
Cake Ingredients: Sungold Coconut Cake
- 2 cups Sugar
- 1 cup Butter, at room temperature
- 4 Eggs, separated
- 1 cup Evaporated Milk
- 3 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 3 teaspoons Baking Powder
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- Pinch of Salt
Coconut Cream Icing
- 3 cups Coconut
- 3 cups Confectioners’ Sugar
- 8 Tablespoons Heavy Cream, approximately.
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350ºF.
- Place flour, baking powder, and pinch of salt, in a sifter.
- Sift three times. Set aside.
- Place butter in a large mixing bowl.
- Add Sugar.
- Beat butter and sugar to a smooth cream consistency.
- Separate the egg yolks from the whites, set whites aside.
- Beat the egg yolks well.
- Add egg yolks to the butter and sugar mixture and beat until very light.
- Add the sifted flour, alternating with the milk, to the first mixture, mix to combine.
- Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.
- Add the vanilla extract to the batter mixture.
- Gently fold in the egg whites to the batter.
- Butter and flour two 9 inch cake layer pans.
- Divide the batter between the two pans.
- Bake at 350ºF for 20-25 minutes, or until done.
- Insert a wooden toothpick or skewer in the center of the baked layer. If it pulls out clean, cake is done.
- Remove from oven, place on a wire rack, let cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan.
- Let layers cool completely.
- Prepare layers as desired before frosting.
To Make The Icing and Assemble The Cake
- Place sugar in a medium size mixing bowl.
- Add the cream, a little at a time, beating steadily.
- Add Vanilla.
- When icing is of the right consistency, spread over the top of the layer.
- Sprinkle a good layer of coconut on top of layer.
- Repeat with the next layer.
- Ice the final layer and sides of the cake.
- Cover the entire cake with remaining coconut.
- Serve and Enjoy!
ow to make an Easter Bunny cake:
This is a cake that my mom used to make for us on Easter Saturday from a pattern she found in a magazine back in the early 70’s. It’s simple and clever: one round cake serves as the bunny face and two simple slices in a second cake create the ears and a bow tie. You then frost, cover the imperfections with coconut (that’s what I do), and decorate with goodies.
Bunny cake diagram
This is the diagram from the old magazine clipping.
Mom used to frost the cake with boiled icing which looks lovely and bunny-like. I haven’t yet learned to make boiled frosting so use a simple white frosting instead. You’ll need a good 4 cups of icing to ice the cake.
Make your bunny cake with this molasses devil’s food cake
Easy creamy icing
1/4 cup soft butter
3 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
3-4 cups of icing sugar
Cream the butter with the milk and vanilla. Add the icing sugar one cup at a time until you get a spreadable consistency.
**You’ll need to double the recipe to fully frost a layer cake.
Related reading
‘Pet De Soeurs’ or Nun’s Pastries
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