“I can”t even begin to imagine how many bunny cakes I”ve made over the years,” Virginia Adair laughed lightly. With a youthful spirit belying her 81 years, the New Hope woman is still baking and decorating the whimsical cakes she first made 46 years ago. For decades, she delighted her own children and scores of families in three different states with the tasty dessert. This week, she once again shares the recipe for what some might call her culinary signature.
It all began in 1964 at Fort Bragg, N.C.
“My husband was stationed at Fort Bragg, and I was working at First Citizens Bank, when a co-worker who didn”t bake gave me the recipe from the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune food section,” she recalled.
With five children, Adair, a compulsive recipe clipper and avid cook, was happy to acquire instructions for an intriguing 3D holiday treat.
“I”d only seen flat bunny cakes, never a standing one,” said Adair, who first learned to cook as a teenager. “My children were between 8 and 15 at the time, and I cooked a lot, made a lot of cookies and a lot of cakes from scratch.”
While her cakes are always homemade, she concedes the novelty cake can be made with a mix. Using two 9-inch round cake layers — one to cut parts from and the other as a base for the standing rabbit — every table can host a delicious and playful pink-eared centerpiece.
Taking shape
Adair prefers to bake her cake layers the day before she plans to decorate. Letting them cool and set thoroughly aids the bunny-building process.
With four simple paper patterns for a body with ears, two legs and a small tail, cut to fit onto one 9-inch cake layer, the rabbit begins to take shape.
Frosting holds the body and legs together, and a toothpick secures the tail.
A tip or two
A little coconut, tinted pink with red food coloring, enhances the ears, and tinting more coconut green provides a fresh bed of “grass” for this bunny surrounded by jelly bean eggs.
To tint the coconut, dilute a few drops of food coloring in a small amount of water in a bowl. Add coconut and toss until the color is distributed evenly. Or, half fill a jar with coconut, sprinkle diluted coloring over the top, cover the jar and shake vigorously until coloring is evenly distributed.
Before decorating the cake, place strips of waxed paper between cake and plate (around cake edges). When the cake is decorated and frosting has set, remove the wax strips and you”ll have a clean plate.
Reaching out
In addition to treating her own family throughout the years, Adair has enjoyed spreading smiles by making the cake for friends and neighbors in North Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi — the states she”s lived in since discovering the recipe.
“I made them for a lot of people; some people just paid me for the ingredients and I”d make them. And lots I made just to give away,” she said, adding with a mock-stern expression and twinkling eye, “The kids did not touch them when I was making them, because they knew they were going somewhere.”
Although she has cut back on bunny cake production, as well as on the cooking she does for herself and husband Morris, Adair couldn”t resist making two this spring to generously share with others. One went to her new pastor”s family at Immanuel Baptist Church.
With Peter Cottontail due to make his annual visit in just a few days, Easter is the perfect time for this veteran cake baker to urge others to start their own hopping good tradition.
EASTER BUNNY CAKE
Two round 9-inch cake layers
Frosting for two-layer cake
2 cups coconut
Red food coloring
Green food coloring
1-pound bag jelly beans
- Bake two regular 9-inch round cake layers. Sketch out patterns on a circular piece of clean paper 9 inches in diameter (kitchen parchment works well).
- When the cake is completely cooled, arrange cut pattern pieces on one layer and use a sharp knife to cut out pieces of the cake.
- Place body of bunny in the center of the second cake layer, making sure it stands up straight. Frost the entire body of the bunny with white frosting. Use 1/4 cup of frosting, tinted pink, on both sides of the ears.
- Place legs into position. Affix the tail on the bunny using a toothpick. Frost legs and tail; cut a pink jelly bean in half for each eye. Use a whole pink jelly bean for the nose.
- Cover entire bunny, including ears, with white coconut. Brush away fallen coconut from the top of the base. Frost base layer with white icing and cover with 1 cup of green-tinted coconut. Decorate the base with jelly beans.
WHITE CAKE
Four egg whites
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract (or 1 teaspoon vanilla, plus 1/4 teaspoon almond extract)
- In a small bowl, let egg whites come to room temperature (about one hour).
- Meanwhile, grease and flour well two 9-by-1 1/2-inch round layer pans. Preheat oven the 350 degrees.
- Sift together sifted flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a large electric mixer bowl. Add shortening, 3/4 milk and vanilla.
Beat at low speed only until ingredients are combined. Then, beat two minutes at medium speed, occasionally scraping the side of the bowl and guiding mixture into beaters with a rubber spatula.
- Add unbeaten egg whites and remaining 1/4 cup of milk and beat two minutes longer.
- Pour batter into prepared pans; bake 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees, or until the surface springs back when pressed gently with fingertips.
- Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove; cool thoroughly on wire racks. Assemble and frost.
SEVEN MINUTE FROSTING
Three egg whites
2 1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup (or 1/3 teaspoon cream of tartar)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- Combine egg whites, sugar, water and corn syrup or cream of tartar in top of a double boiler. With rotary beater or portable electric mixer, beat about one minute to combine ingredients.
- Cook over rapidly boiling water (water should not touch top of double boiler), beating constantly for about seven minutes, until stiff peaks form when beater is removed slowly. Remove from boiling water.
- Add vanilla and continue beating until frosting is thick enough to spread. Makes enough to frost the bunny cake.
FLUFFY WHITE FROSTING
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
Dash salt
Two egg whites, unbeaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
- Combine 1 cup sugar, 1/3 cup water, 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar and dash of salt in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
- Very slowly, add sugar syrup to two unbeaten egg whites in mixing bowl, beating constantly with electric mixer until stiff peaks form, about seven minutes. Beat in 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Frosts tops and sides of two 9-inch layers or one 10-inch tube cake.
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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