Hop to it - Bunny Cake

Has it seriously been nearly a year since my last post??!!! Shocking!!

Well, I’d better change that!! Rightto , I am committing to post something at least once a month, but hopefully it will be more frequent than that, especially with Halloween and Christmas coming up.

Man, I love holidays !! Any excuse to bake :)

So far I am planning :

-          Halloween themed cupcakes – I am thinking pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing and chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing

-          Pumpkin and Bourbon pie

-          Gingerbread house

-           Panettone

-          Christmas cake

-          Mince pies

Hmmmm….. I think that’s about it – pretty ambitious, but lets see how I go.

Just to prove that I am still baking, here is a photo of a cake I’ve made for Ms Rantlet’s 1^st birthday – I know!!! 1 already!!! Where did the time go?

It’s a two-base cake – head is a lemon cake and bow and ears is a strawberry cake. I used Rachel Allen’s Easy Lemon cake recipe as a base for both cakes, with a couple of variations :

Lemon cake :

110 g butter, softened and diced

110 g caster sugar

1 lemon, finely grated zest + juice

2 eggs

150 g plain flour, sifted

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp yellow food colouring

Strawberry cake :

110 g butter, softened and diced

90 g caster sugar

3 Tbsp thick strawberry jam

2 eggs

150 g plain flour, sifted

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 Tbsp milk

½  tsp red food colouring

Decoration :

Lemon curd

Strawberry jam

1 to 2 packs of shop-bought Royal icing

Food colourings

Coloured sprinkles

Bake both cakes as described in the recipe, until firm to touch.

I wanted the lemon cake to be quite bright yellow and strawberry cake to be pale pink, hence the different amounts of food colouring. You can use any food colouring you like, but I prefer “SugarFlair” – they are quite expensive, but very thick in texture, which means you only need a little bit of it and it goes a long way.  

Cool completely on wire racks. Cut each cake in two layers. Sandwich lemon cake with lemon curd and strawberry cake with strawberry jam.

Arrange the “head “ cake on your presentation board, cut hears out of the second cake, and whatever is left makes up your bow-tie – simple!!

Roll out a pack of royal icing on a surface covered with cling film – makes it much easier to work with. Apply a thin spread of curd to the lemon cake – top and sides – and cover it with icing. Tuck in the edges and cut out any extra bits. Use that extra icing to make bunny’s face,  lemon curd will act as a glue to stick bits of icing on top of each other.

Roll out second pack of royal icing and cover the ears and the bow-tie with it – don’t forget to apply strawberry jam on top of the cake before covering it with the icing.

Decorate the cake as you like – I used my fingers and had very dirty looking fingers the next day, a painting brush would have worked better, I think – oh well, next time.

You can always use any butter or cream cheese icing instead and decorate the cake with candy – that would work too. Just type "bunny cake" into Google Images and you'll see loads of examples and different decoration ideas.

The cake was a success, Mr Rantlet enjoyed it, which is the main thing

Gotta run, got a banana bread in the oven, back soon with more recipes