The bunny takes it all

I’m not a great fan of cakes that look great but have little taste. This cake that I made for an easter dinner is a winner in both taste and presentation, yet, it is pretty easy to make. If you look at the picture, you can see that I was not the only one who thought the cake was tasty. The bunny dived right into the middle of the carrot cake and ate all the cheese frosting!

Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting

Ingredients

The carrot cake

4 carrots, coarsely shredded (300 g/10 oz)

150 g/5.5 oz soft butter

100 g/3.5 oz of sugar

100 g/3.5 oz brown sugar

150 g/5.5 oz all-purpose flour

4 eggs

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

The frosting

400 g/13 oz plain cream cheese (not fatreduced)

1/2 lemon, juice and zest

1/2 vanilla pod

2-3 tsp icing sugar

For decorating

Fondant

Food colour (orange, brown, pink)

1 box of Oreos (150 g/5 oz)

Parsley

Directions

1. Start off by making the carrot cake. Whisk the softened butter, sugar and brown sugar into a smooth blend. Add the eggs one at a time and stir. Make sure not to add another egg before the previous egg is totally absorbed into the mixture. Once all eggs are in, the shredded carrots go in.

2. In another bowl mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. This mixture is now added into the carrot mixture. Make sure to stir the two mixtures well.

3. Pour the finished mixture into a round baking pan (about 20 cm in diameter) that is greased beforehand. Let the cake bake for 45 minutes at 175 degrees celsius in a convection oven (if you use a conventional oven set the heat at 190 degrees celsius instead). The baking time can be very different from one oven to another, so make sure to check that the cake is baked before taking it out of the oven. To check if it’s done stick a toothpick into the cake and if no unfinished dough sticks to the pin when you take it out the cake is ready to go out of the oven.

4. Leave the cake to cool. The cake should be completely cold before the frosting goes on.

5. Now it’s time for the frosting. Whisk together all the ingredients into a smooth mixture. Pour 1/3 of the mixture into another bowl and add a fitting amount of orange food colour. The mixture should have the same colour as carrots. The mixture then goes into a piping bag. The brown food colour is added to the last 2/3 of the cheese mixture. Don’t add too much as it should only be a light brown colour.

6. Cover the cooled cake with the brown cheese mixture. Try to get the surface as smooth as possible and the top of the cake should be totally flat.

7. Now make the bunny and the picket fence out of the fondant.

8. To make the dirt on top of the cake, you need to remove the butter cream inside all of the Oreos. It doesn’t matter if they break, since the next thing we do is to put all the Oreos into a bag and then smash them up gently with a rolling-pin. The Oreo crumble goes onto the top of the cake. The whole top of the cake should be covered.

9. To make the carrots take a sharp knife and cut cones into the cake in 3 places, but be careful to leave room for the bunny. By doing that you make sure that the carrots also look like carrots when you cut into the cake. Fill out the cone-shaped holes with the orange cheese mixture.

10. Now the only thing you need to do is to place the bunny on top of the cake and place a piece of parsley in each of the 3 cream cheese carrots to make them look like real carrots.

Enjoy!