How to Screw Up an Easter Bunny Cake

Yesterday was Easter, but we celebrated on Saturday. We had friends coming over to celebrate TableTop Day and Zach and I had no intention of going anywhere for Easter, so we thought, “Why not combine them?” And we did. (Games played: Carcassone, Arkham Horror, and Cards Against Humanity…overall, a fun night. Rando Cardrissian almost won, though. I beat him by two points…after I started cheating.)

I made a lot of food for Easter, but the first one I would like to discuss is my Easter bunny cake. Because…it had so much potential, but just kept failing so hard.

I started out trying to make I&I’s Paleo Coconut Cake. But my coconut oil returned to its solid state once combined with the eggs. (Note to self: next time, bring the eggs to room temperature.) I decided to just go with it and put it in the oven, anyway. That was a disaster. One side rose a lot, the other side was completely flat. Oh. And the inside was HOLLOW. Completely! But I’ll be trying it again because it just seems like it would be so good.

So I went with non-Paleo since  it was what I had ingredients for. I decided to make Foodie with Family’s Snickerdoodle Cake because…why not? Except I changed the frosting, using Bubblecrumb’s Best Cream Cheese Frosting recipe. (Note: I substituted almond milk for butter and it came out perfectly.)

This isn’t about the kind of cake, though. This is about the way my bunny turned out. I had visions of it coming out like this, despite how unrealistic that was. (Which I knew intelligently, but my dreams kind of got away from me.) Knowing that carving cakes is not my forte, I decided to make one round cake and then six cupcakes (well, twelve cupcakes…but I only needed six–and, yes, that snickerdoodle cake recipe goes a long way…I think it’s supposed to make three round cakes). Once they were done baking, the cupcakes were perfect. But the cake?

I followed the directions, but I couldn’t get the cake to come out of the pan. It fell apart when I tried. So I had to do a lot of, um, “cake plastic surgery,” if you will. Which really just means putting the pieces together in a way that makes it look like a whole cake is there and then just COVERING it in frosting. Once that was done, I put three cupcakes on each side to look like ears and covered them in frosting, too. Then I sprinkled a bag of sweetened coconut on top to look like white fur.

Oh…but then it hit me. “I don’t have any candy to decorate with.” Also, my piping skills are horrendous. Not that it mattered, since I was out of frosting, anyway. “But I have sprinkles!” Because I apparently lack the ability to just leave well enough alone.

And here’s how it came out:

…Yeah.

Zach said it looked like Frank the Bunny from Donnie Darko.

And he was delicious.

Anyone else care to share their baking mishaps?

ETA: In other news, I went through my cedar chest and found a bunch of my wedding stuff. Inspired by a couple Zach works with who use everything from their wedding to decorate their house, I’m trying to find places for my stuff. Some are easy, some…very much not. I’ll let you all know how that goes.