Easter Cake 2024


Easter Cake 2024

I did a quick check with the family to see if they wanted carrot cake again for Easter, or coconut cake for something different.  Carrot cake won the day!  

I decided to try a new recipe and went with this one from King Arthur Flour.  I specifically wanted to bake it in 8-inch rounds in order to have enough space for a fun decoration, but not too much space.  This recipe is for 9-inch rounds, so I was prepared to have leftover batter and make cupcakes.  But it only filled the pans halfway up, so I used up all the batter.  Since the change in pan size made me a bit nervous about dry edges and uncooked centers I baked them at 345 F.  At 35 minutes they were well underdone. I raised the oven temp to 350 and checked again in 5 minutes and they were still raw in the middle.  I gave them an additional 10 minutes, and then they were done.  And maybe even a bit over dry, though hardly noticeably.

I needed 2 batches of buttercream (each batch using 2 sticks of butter and 440g of confectioner's sugar) in order to have enough to fill and decorate the cake. And this was in spite of it being a 2-layer cake.  I made cinnamon buttercream.  I did have a good amount of buttercream left over though. As I've said before, I'd like to make a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, but not when I have to travel 3 hours with it out of the refrigerator.

For the decoration I decided to do an Easter egg hunt theme.  I so miss the days when Bubby was little and we would go to different Easter egg hunts.  I remember him running with his basket and collecting the eggs.  The first time he went to the big park, he was so confused he would just run around screaming. I wasn't the only parent who chased after her kid as he chased the eggs, "helping out"! 

I decorated the sides of the cake with blue, yellow and pink stripes. No cake comb, I just piped the colors with a 1/2 inch tip, then scraped to blend them.  Next time I do stripes without a comb on a cake this tall, I'd like to remember to do two rows of each color.  I felt that with 6 rows of varying colors the sides of the cake looked a little bit busy.  However, it did come together with the application of pink fondant bunny head silhouettes on the sides of the cake.  I made these by simply rolling out pink-colored fondant and cutting them out with a little cookie cutter.  



The sides of the cake and the grass on top

The top of the cake was so much fun to do!  I piped "grass" using the Wilton grass tip.  For me this is the hardest to use of all the piping tips.  I don't know how to make the proper consistency of buttercream for this tip. It's  have to control and to make it look like real grass and not like messy spaghetti. It's never happened before but the tip kept getting clogged, with buttercream coming out of only a few of the holes.  I kept having to take the tip off and clean it. It took longer than I though to pipe the buttercream grass. But with that, the cake was done, since I planned to place the caketop decorations after I got to Grandpa's house.

I'd made the fondant figures ahead of time to make sure they woudl dry. I made the bunny following this tutorial from Cake Fairy that I found on YouTube. I didn't use much (or any, I can't remember) tylose to make the body of the bunny, so the weight of the head pushed the bottom part down. From the side the bunny looks like he's got a big butt!  I attached the ears using floral wire and the head using a toothpick.  The bunny's ears and cheeks are colored with pink luster dust.

Fondant bunny


I made the basket using a circle cookie cutter and a wide strip of fondant glued around it. With a small palette knife, I pressed lines to simulate a basket.  They are hard to see, because there's so much tylose powder in the fondant and because of the brown color.  I let the basket dry and the next day I applied to the handle tiny flowers made using the Wilton Nature Designs fondant mold.  I've owned this mold for a long time and have used it for lots of projects, it's worth having.  I was wondering whether they would stick, since the figure was pretty dry.  But they stuck without a problem!


Easter basket with flower detail


I made the sign by covering most of a long toothpick with fondant for the "pole", then attaching the "board" and letting it dry upside down. Once it was dry I wrote "Egg Hunt" on the sign.  I wish I'd made the letters bigger and centered them better.  Oh well.


Egg hunt sign


On the top of the cake I scattered Cadbury mini-eggs and fondant flowers also made with the Wilton mold.  I colored the center of the flowers with pink luster dust, the same I used for the bunny's cheeks.


Caketop decorations


I very was happy with how the cake looked.  Maybe next year we'll try a carrot-coconut recipe.  That will satisfy everyone!


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