Easter Cake 2026
Dieu merci this Easter we are not going to Grandpa's house. For a variety of reasons, and I am thrilled to stay home. It's much less work, and last year's blowout with SIL still rankles me.
We simplified our plans further, from the initial thought of inviting friends over for brunch, to deciding to make a simple brunch for the three of us. On the menu: asparagus, green salad, cod cakes, And for dessert, Carrot Cake!
I decided to go with this recipe from Sallys Bake Blog. I've this cupcake recipe before in two six-inch pans, hoping to get tall layers and not have to use too much frosting in between. Results have been mixed, with sometimes the cakes coming out perfectly, others with a dry exterior and not entire cooked middle. It's a lot of batter for two pans, so I decided to try it in three pans. It worked very well in terms of amounts! I followed the recipe to the letter and baked it in three 6-inch pans. The baking time was almost 25 minutes, though you do need to start checking after 18 minutes. And the layers were a decent height, not too thin.
Another benefit of not traveling is that I don't have to have the cake outside of the refrigerator for the trip over. I decided to take advantage of this to make cream cheese frosting. Again, I used a recipe from Sally's Bake Blog. Here it is.
The recipe yielded more than enough frosting for this cake. I could easily have used more frosting in between the layers, and I could have piped a decorative border, or had a thicker layer of frosting on the outside of the cake.
For the decoration of the cake, initially I thought of making a panel covered in buttercream with vintage piping and a profile of a bunny rabbit cut out in fondant or made out of buttercream using palette knives. But the cake is really so small, it doesn't lend itself to this.
Next, I thought of using a cookie cutter to make an outline of a bunny and fill it with sprinkles. This didn't come out quite as I'd hoped, for a number of reasons. First, the cookie cutter that I have is pretty large and goes from the top to the bottom of the cake. That makes for a very big rabbit head! I couldn't let the cake firm up too long in the refrigerator once iced in order for the sprinkles to stick to it. But when I tilted the cake to throw a handful of sprinkles into the space inside the cookie cutter, the layers slid around. I righted the cake, pushed the layers back in place, and repaired the back. But the front, where the bunny impression was, also now looked a bit rough. And, the top of the bunny impression, the area around the ears, hadn't caught as many sprinkles as I'd hoped. Most had slid to the bottom. I pressed those in as best I could, then filled in the ears using tweezers and placing the sprinkles one by one. The result is a bit rough looking, but I still think the main objection is the sheer size of the bunny. But I just didn't have a smaller cutter!
The back of the cake, where I held it with my hand to keep it from sliding further while I tilted it to fill in with sprinkles, looked rather rough. I tried to make an angled-spatula decoration along the bottom of the cake. It might have looked better had I run the spatula from bottom all the way to the top of the cake. But then again, it might also have looked worse. This cake is just for the three of us and no one is going to judge. So I just let it be.
For the rest of the cake, I made carrot decorations using buttercream and a piping bag of orange frosting with a round tip and another bag with green buttercream and a small leaf tip. The carrots look better with three leaves instead of two. I placed these in the freezer to firm up, then applied them to the cake. I had to apply each one using a dab of buttercream.
In spite of the giant bunny and the rough frosting the cake is pretty cute with the little carrots all around and on the top. I learned a few things from this bake and, most importantly, I know my little family will enjoy it.
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