Easter Bunny Lemon Cake ✿

 

Happy Easter long weekend everybody! 

I hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating with family and friends :-)

 

We had a great time at my in-laws with 19 of us celebrating together, enjoying a delicious dinner, WAY too much food and lots of dessert.

 

I made a cake to share on the dessert table, and with Spring in the air I chose a lemon cake, with raspberry jam and lemon buttercream filling and decoration.  I had a plan for the decorations in mind after I picked up a new cookie cutter that came with a flower shaped cutter for the tail!!  Actually we were shopping and my husband actually thought it would be a great addition to my already overflowing cookie cutter collection, so now he can't complain I have too many :-P

 

 

 

I chose to add some sugar sprinkles to the fondant rabbit cut outs to give it a different texture so it would stand out from the bunny shape itself.  I made the fondant rabbits the day before baking day so that they would dry out a little to make it harder and able to stand up against the cake, and not let the buttercream add moisture and go soft and floppy.  I didn't want these Easter bunnies to be floppy bunnies around the cake!!

 

 



So that was my first vision... I knew I wanted the Easter bunnies to stand facing in around the cake, but what to go on the top?  And what colour should the buttercream be?!

 

Initially I thought I would go with a bright colour for Spring, and perhaps add some coloured mini eggs over the top... but well, on making the buttercream, I went with a little blue, but didn't like it... and then thought, maybe some red added would make a good purple.

 

And after realising that this wasn't the original plan and that I was okay with that, I actually really liked the muted purple contrasting with the white fondant rabbits.  So I thought I would add some more white to the cake and cut out some mini flowers for the top! 

 

 

And that's everything you can see on the outside...Now for the actual cake part!  The recipe I used for the Easter cake is the same recipe my Mum used for one layer of our wedding cake nearly 3 years ago, yey! ♥  I then just made a basic lemon buttercream to fill the middle and frost the outside of the cake.  Keep reading for the recipe! 

Ingredients:

14oz unsalted butter
15 3/4oz sugar
14oz self-raising flour
14oz eggs (one egg can be between 1-2oz) so I ended up using 8 large eggs for this recipe
3 1/2 tbsp milk
Zest of 2 lemons

For the syrup:
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp. hot water
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

 

Method:

 

1.  Pre-heat oven to 180°C/ 355°F and grease and line two 9" sandwich tins.

2.  Place all sponge cake ingredients in a mixing bowl.  Mix on a slow speed until there are no lumps of fat.  Scrape down at all stages.

3.  Mix on a medium speed for 2 minutes and then full speed for a further 1 minute.

4.  Spoon the mixture into the line cake tins.

5.  Bake until cooked - 35 - 45 minutes - until the top is golden brown, and a cake tester comes out clean.

6.  Leave to cool on a cooling rack.  Once the cake is taken out of the tin brush the surfaces with lemon stock syrup.

 

*** Make the syrup while the cake is in the oven ***

 

1.  Dissolve the caster sugar in hot water

2.  Then add the fresh lemon juice

3.  Mix together and spread generously over the cake with a pastry brush and let it soak in.

 

 

For the buttercream - beat together 16oz unsalted butter with 24oz icing sugar.  Add 1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice and 1 1/2 tbsp milk and mix until combined.  Add food colouring as desired. 

 

This made enough buttercream to fill the middle of the cake, to frost the outside, and with enough leftover that it wasn't tight to be able to cover the cake comfortably.  Phew!

 

 

Have a great long weekend day today if you didn't have to go back to work/school!  Thanks for reading :-)