Adventures in Easter Themed Baking Part 5

Taaaa Daaaa!!

The finished product. Covered in tasty frosting and yummy coconut, it's hard to tell I had to piece it together.

The inside of the ears are tinted marzipan dusted with sugar. The eyes are marzipan and chocolate chip pupils. The nose is a teeny grapefruit Jelly Belly.

I rather pleased considering it as my first try at this thing.

If I make it again, I think I'll bake it in two halves and stick them together with jam.

My hope is to get Knut's mother's deilig (Norwegian for delicious) lemon bundt recipe and make a lemon rabbit for less seasonal occasions :)

One of the problems with this kind of cake is that no one wants to eat the face. Had my brother Jamie been present at Easter dinner, I'd have cut off the head and served it on a plate for him.

I think he'd like that.

Happy Easter, everybody!!

Adventures in Easter Themed Baking Part 4

Okay, here is the evidence that I should always trust Great Aunt Edna. Any woman who can keep a sweater from 1967 looking as fresh as one bought today clearly deserves respect. Buckets of it.

The instructions said to wait for the mold to cool totally before opening it. Thank goodness I'm impatient! There was a delicious looking outer shell and a gooey uncooked center.

Fab in a Cadbury Cream Egg, but not what I was looking for in a cake.

It also hadn't risen enough to meet the top of the mold.

Crap.

I put it back in the oven and it cooked through, but I still had half a rabbit. Fortunately! I had baked those little cupcakes. I could patch the problem and cover it all in 7 minute frosting, which is basically stirred meringue. Powerful as gorilla glue and tastes like marshmallow. Side A and Side B.

Adventures in Easter Themed Baking Part 3

Sorry! I meant to update more Saturday, but there were a few unforeseen problems followed by foreseenly awesome Lucha Libre! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I made the batter on Saturday, according to the recipe. I checked the instructions and they said to fill it only with 3 cups of batter.

Edna's recipe was at least 2 cups more than that so I figured I'd err on the side of the recipe and use only three cups.

I filled up two ramekins to make cupcakes in addition.

I filled the mold, tied it together with string, and baked it per the instructions.

Let this be a lesson to me and to others.

Don't ever mistrust German housewives.

They know their baking.

Adventures in Easter Themed Baking Part 2

Okay, I've eaten the ugliest Easter egg for Easter Power! Yeah!

(We had my parents and our awesome friends Lauren and Eli over to dye eggs. Highlight of the night was definitely Knut's Iron Maiden Eddie egg.)

I've taken out the mold and looked at the directions. The mold came with recipes too. Last year, someone brought in a lamb cake to the office that was sticky, dense, and dry and heavily flavored with almond extract. Having looked at those recipes, it's obvious how that amazing combination of adjectives was achieved. Yuck.

Fortunately, I have the angels on my side in the form of Great Aunt Edna's recipe. Mom got it over the phone so this should be interesting. Mom has pretty but virtually unreadable handwriting. I looked it over at lunch yesterday and said to her "A little suet?!"

"That's salt" she said.

Interesting, indeed.

I've started my shopping list and I just can't decide. Cream Cheese or 7 Minute Frosting? I think Cream Cheese is traditional, but I looooove 7 Minute. It also has the advantage of being super stable once it sets, which is a definite plus since it has to be transported and probably be a centerpiece.

Okay, clearly I've made a decision without realizing it.

Adventures in Easter Themed Baking Part 1

My great aunt, who is now in her nineties, used to bake lamb cakes every Easter when she was a young and spry (like in her 70s). Lovely ones filled with spice cake, cream cheese frosting, coconut fleece, and currant eyes. I think she sometimes even put a ribbon around it's neck. Beautiful and delicious.

Two years ago for my birthday, Mom got me a cast iron rabbit cake mold. We couldn't find it last year for Easter, but now I've got it. I'm going to make one!

I'm petrified.

More updates throughout the day!

PS. This lamb cake is from here:http://annhetzelgunkel.com/easter/lambcake.html

Not Aunt Edna's actual lamb cake. Maybe Mom has a photo somewhere...

Computer Generated Onesies

Wow, that sounds like some kind of cyber baby thing, doesn’t it?

Before I started on the animal puns onesies, I made these little animals on Photoshop. I like working with photoshop for these things because it’s so easy to go back and personalize things. For instance, I made a little dog with fluffy ears to represent my Cavalier, Colin. Then I changed the colors to honey blonde to represent my friend’s mixed breed (she’s golden retriever, dashund, and cocker spaniel. A craxy mix, but she looks like a teeny golden) dog, Bella, and added eyelashes and a pink heart around it. Then I took that image, darkened it and took away the eyelashes to represent my brother’s dog, Xialoum, and added the legend “Food Rival” underneath.

A tip for Photoshop users—the shape library includes a bunch of bananas. Turn ‘em sideways and they make terrific eyelashes.

Rosemary is modeling one of the little monkey onesies. For her, I added in “Property of Shing Mun Reservoir.” Shing Mun was a favorite spot of my brother’s and sister in law’s when they lived in Hong Kong. Shing Mun had lots of macaques and Jamie made up a little story about them.

Once when Jamie and Mina were in Shing Mun, they were stopped at the gates. They wouldn’t let Mina go home because they were convinced she was a monkey. Mina had to stay there with the rest of the monkeys, but Jamie and their daughter promised to visit once a week.

I have no idea if either of them actually remembers this story, but I certainly did! So when Rosemary was born, I figured she would need something like this.

This is the danger of telling me anything. It'll eventually end up on a t-shirt.

Wedding Cake

So here’s the question you all haven’t been wondering about! What sort of wedding cake topper did I have?

Well, to begin, I got married in a red satin dress to a Norwegian guy in britches (actually he wore his bunad, which is a sort of folk costume popular in Norway. And very attractive!). Our wedding was in a 1920s cottage surround by woods. The idea was to have a relaxed affair that felt like an old fashioned wedding in someone’s home.

Our regular white wedding cake was topped with lily of the valley, but this little number topped the groom’s cake. Knut had a kranzekake which is a cake made from ground almonds that is layered in rings so that it forms a cone. We had gotten into the habit of depicting ourselves as a wolf and a bunny through letters and doodles, so I figured we might as well go all the way.