My Husband’s Grandma’s Bunny Cake Is The Easter Dessert I Look Forward to Every Year

I was a spring chick myself the first time I visited my now-husband’s family in Pennsylvania to celebrate Easter. In our early days of dating, my husband described his family as “matriarchal,” meaning if there was a holiday to be celebrated, the party was happening at one of his grandmothers’ houses. His Grandma Peters, known for delights like Crunchy Munchy Chicken, and his Grandma Shaffer, both lived a stone’s throw from the house his parents lived in, making family get-togethers pretty effortless.

I’ll never forget meeting Grandma Shaffer, my husband’s mom’s mother, and being immediately taken with her hospitality and talent for throwing a large meal together for her family. That Easter meal was filled with holiday staples—a ham dinner with all the fixin’s—and included the cutest cake I’d ever seen.

“Can I take a picture of you with that bunny cake?” I asked her as she arranged dishes on the dinner table.  Never one to toot her own horn, she reluctantly obliged.

Turns out, I wouldn’t have many Easters with Grandma Shaffer, as she passed away right around the time my husband and I started our own family. But many of her culinary traditions live on in her absence, including the bunny cake. In my Florida home, I make my own version. In Pennsylvania, my mother-in-law carries on the tradition by making one each year. 

How to Make Grandma Shaffer's Bunny Cake

An Easter bunny cake looks impressive and makes a great Easter centerpiece, but it’s surprisingly easy to make. I prefer to keep things simple, skipping the steps of making a cake and icing from scratch and turning to store-bought mixes to get my Easter dessert hoppin’. After mixing yellow cake mix according to the package instructions, I pour the batter into two greased, 9-inch springform pans and bake them for however long the box instructs. 

When the cakes are fully baked, I let them cool for about 15 minutes on the counter, then pop both cake rounds out of their springform pans and allow them to cool on a wire rack for about 20 more minutes, until they’re completely cool to the touch. One round becomes the Easter bunny’s head and needs nothing done to it. Simply place it on the serving plate and focus your attention on the other of the two rounds.

From the second cake round, cut two convex shapes from each side to make two “ears.” The remaining concave-shaped piece in the middle becomes bunny’s bowtie. All that’s left to do is arrange the two cake ears atop the bunny’s head and place the bowtie piece below the bunny’s chin. The whole thing then gets slathered with white icing, then sprinkled and patted with flaked coconut to mimic bunny fur.

Bunny Cake Decoration Ideas

Next, it’s time to decorate the bunny cake, something that looks a bit different each year for us. Sometimes, we use licorice for whiskers but, in a pinch, my mother-in-law has used wooden toothpicks for this step. That Easter candy brought by the real Easter bunny is the perfect thing for decorating the cake, and can be used for everything from eyes to bowtie decorations. We also often use colored icing to add some details to the bunny’s ears, face, and bowtie.

The result is a sweet bunny-shaped Easter cake that’s simple to make but tastes great and pleases guests of all ages. And, just like those Easter basket chocolate bunnies, there’s always some argument over who gets to nibble on the bunny cake’s ear. 

Easter bunny cakes are a simple tradition that have become a must-have around my family’s dinner table. There are plenty of other variations on Easter cakes, too, from lamb-shaped cakes to Easter bunny “butt” cakes. Whichever you choose, it’s likely to become a tradition that delights your family and makes everyone at your table feel connected to family members near and far, even when the bunny trail between those family celebrations is long.