Bunny Cake

One of our Easter traditions is the Making of the Bunny Cake.  This came to me from my sister-in-law Sue who made the cake for Dave’s family’s Easter dinner every year.  About five or six years ago, Sue had a very busy spring and I was so happy to take over the Making of the Bunny Cake for her…and for some reason we’ve done it every year since.  Each Easter I hope she doesn’t ask to take it back, and so far I’ve been lucky!

I almost always make the cake a coconut cake or carrot cake.  Coconut cake is my absolute favorite cake in the world…so instead I will be making the carrot cake this year (Ha! to you, Deb!  My diet will not be derailed by coconut cake this year!)  I don’t really like carrot cake, so I will be happy with a few bites.  Click here for my carrot cake and cream cheese frosting recipes, and I’ll include my coconut cake recipe down below, but you can make any old cake you like.

Basically, make two round cakes.  One cake will be the bunny’s face, the other will be his ears and bow tie.  The face cake stays intact, then you cut the two ears and bow tie from the other cake (see diagram to right).  Place the pieces on your cake board and frost.    Cover the bunny’s face and ears with coconut (if you like coconut) to make him look furry, then use candy, marshmallows, sprinkles, etc. to give him some personality.  At our house, the kids rotate decorating the ears, face or bowtie from year to year.  If you study the pictures, you can usually tell which part the oldest child decorated and which part the youngest decorated!  You can also put the coconut in a ziploc bag with a few drops of food coloring and shake to color the coconut.  We did that one year to give the bunny a pink coconut bowtie (see left). 

Check out some of our bunnies from the past:




It’s so easy to do, especially if you use a box cake mix (in fact my coconut cake is a doctored cake mix, though it won’t taste like a box mix at all).  I hope you try it, it’s such a fun part of our Easter!

Peg B.’s* Coconut Cake

1 box Duncan Hines White Cake Mix

1 small box Coconut Cream instant pudding

1 c. water

4 eggs

1/2 c. oil

handful of coconut

Grease and flour two round pans.  Mix all ingredients together and divide between pans.  Bake at 350 degrees for 28 minutes (that’s exactly the time for my oven…yours might be 27-30 minutes).  Allow to cool for ten minutes then remove from pans to a cooling rack to finish cooling.  Assemble into a bunny and decorate. 

For this cake I use a slightly different frosting than for my carrot cake:

4  1/2 c. powdered sugar

1/3 c. water

1/2 c. Crisco

3 oz. cream cheese, softened

1 t. vanilla

pinch salt

remainder of bag of coconut used making coconut cake

Mix together all ingredients except coconut.  Spread coconut on top of frosted cake.


*Peg was an older lady at my church who often brought this coconut cake to church picnics.  She did not give out her recipe to people because she was a bit embarrassed that it started with a mix.  One time I did a little favor for her, and she made me a coconut cake to thank me and included the recipe.  When Peg died, one of the discussions at her funeral was how much we would miss her coconut cake as well as missing her.  I am so proud to be one of the few persons with her recipe and I think of her every time I make it.

I am linking this post with Foodie Friday.  Happy Easter!