My daughter turned 6 last month, and she requested a bunny cake for her birthday. The requirements were that it needed to be vanilla cake with chocolate frosting, and that she wanted only the face of the bunny instead of the whole body. I had a basic idea of how to make it in my head, but I went online to see if there was a better way. I ended up finding a recipe on the Betty Crocker website, and I used the pattern on there for the basis on my cake. Then my son and I let our imaginations run wild and decorate it ourselves.
First, I used Bob's Red Mill gluten free vanilla cake mix to make 2 9-inch round cake pans. I followed the recipe on the bag, so it was very easy. After the cakes had cooled slightly, I removed them from the pans and placed them in the freezer to make them easier to decorate my cake.
When the cake was frozen, I took them out of the freezer. One of the cakes I put on a cake server and spread chocolate frosting all over it. Then I set it to the side. This will be the face of the bunny. Then I cut the second cake into the ears and a bow tie based on the pattern below. (After we decorated the cake, my son and I decided that the bunny was wearing a t-shirt instead of a bow tie. So, we made a bunny wearing a shirt.) Once the second cake was cut, I started piecing the bunny pattern using the frosting as the glue holding the bunny together. Then I finished icing the cake.
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| From the Betty Crocker website |
Then my son came in to help me decorate the cake. First, he decided that we should use sprinkles for the center part of the ears, but we could not decide whether to use pink or purple (those are my daughter's favorite colors). So, we decided to do one of each! My son sprinkled pink sprinkles on one ear and purple sprinkles on the other ear. My daughter decided to use m&m's as well as jelly beans for her cake.* We used green m&m's for the eyes since my daughter has green eyes. We used a pink jelly bean for the nose. Then we used gummy worms for the whiskers and the mouth. Then we outlined the bunny's t-shirt with jelly beans, and filled it in with m&m's.
We thought the decorations turned out very well and the cake was delicious! This was confirmed when my 6 year old was jumping around the house after seeing that we made her a bunny cake. It was exactly what she wanted. I am so happy that I was able to continue our family tradition.
*I have found it very hard to find gluten free jelly beans, but we recently found allergen-free jelly beans at our local store. The company that makes them in called Gimbal's, and my children love them! The packaging includes pictures of the different jelly beans with their flavors, and my children love to figure out which flavors they are eating.
My son's 8th birthday is next month......I wonder what design he is going to pick? No matter what it is, I know that I am going to have fun making it!
<3 Cassidy
