Make easy Easter eggs and a bunny cake

Grand Island Dispatch, April 6, 2007

Do you have enough eggs to satisfy that child in you, as the children or grandchildren that will be hunting for those colored beauties come the Easter Sunday? There is still time to stock up on them.

I well remember the first Easter after our daughter was born. Since she was the tender age of 4 months, she would not recall her first Easter, but I wanted to start a tradition. I bought eggs and an Easter egg coloring kit.

We lived in a little community of like-minded young couples who hadn’t yet figured out how to buy a house and settle down. Pearce and Pearce rented the duplexes that we lived in. A vacant lot and a Mom and Pop store sat across the street from our unit.

My family had never made a big fuss over Easter preparations.

My brother and I got big baskets of goodies and I got new clothes and a new bonnet, but I don’t think we got hard-boiled and dyed eggs in those baskets.

One year, I got a baby rabbit, promptly named Bunny Boy. In a short, short time, I was told that Bunny Boy would like it on a farm, and he was gone.

Believe it or not, we actually went to B.B.’s farm. There he was in an open air cage. He was much fatter than when he lived at our house.

I was told later that he wasn’t a he at all. Bunny Boy had had eight little bunnies!

That was nice of my folks to let me actually see my first live pet again. But no colored eggs.

So let’s do the hard-boiled eggs a nice, easy, reliable way; then we’ll color them without even needing a kit.

Hard-Boiled Eggs

Wash uncooked eggs in a cool water spray.

Set as many eggs as you want in a saucepan that is large enough to accommodate them.

Fill the saucepan with enough cold water to cover them to at least one inch over the eggs.

Heat the water to a boil.

Boil for one minute.

Remove pan from heat.

Cover and let stand for about 25 minutes.

Drain. Immediately run cold water into pan so that the eggs do not cook any longer.

Place cooled eggs into a leftover (preferably paper) egg carton to dry.

Get yesterday’s newspaper and put it on the surface you want to use to color eggs.

Is this an all-inclusive family activity, or are your children young enough to think that the bunny brings the eggs? If it’s a family thing, the youngsters may need your assistance. So set out your old coffee cups, get the teakettle hot or boil a cup of water in the microwave.

To each six-ounce cup of boiling water, add one teaspoon of vinegar and add about 20 drops of McCormick’s food color/egg dye.

The colors are so varied in the chart on the four-vial box that you will start with pure green, yellow, red or blue or combine the colors to make six more colors that are gorgeous.

I’m no artist, but I have used masking tape cut-outs to make a child’s name to be put on before the dye bath, and I’ve cut out strips to make designs, too.

You may put a teaspoonful of cooking oil in the cup to create swirly designs, if you’d like.

Just follow the instructions on the box. Your purchase of the food colors will last a few seasons, you know.

I still do a few for my husband, Bob. His sweet tooth rules, though. He’ll get a basket with spice-flavored jelly beans, a moderate amount of chocolate and, this year, no Easter grass. I’ve cleaned up enough of that to have covered up our front yard.

So, we had a tradition that we created. It was good.

Lately, as a grandparent, I started another Easter project. I make a bunny cake.

All you need is an 18-and-1/4-ounce cake mix and the usual ingredients to add to it; a recipe of cream cheese frosting; a package of sweetened and flaked coconut, two sheets of construction paper (one white, one pink); three jelly beans (two pink, one black); some toothpicks; and two layer-cake pans.

Bunny Cake (pound cake variety)

1 cake mix (any flavor)
1 package (same flavor as the cake mix) instant pudding
4 large eggs
1 cup water
1/3-cup canola oil.
1 package sweetened, flaked coconut
1 recipe of cream cheese frosting.

Combine the first five ingredients in a large bowl. Beat for two minutes. Pour into pre-greased and floured eight-inch pans.

Bake at 350 degrees for 33 to 36 minutes.

Cool on wire rack for at least 15 minutes and remove from pans. Cool completely before frosting.

Cover a cookie sheet with foil, or if you have a platter that is large enough, use that.

Sprinkle platter with a little confectioner’s sugar if you have it. It will keep the cake from sticking to the platter.

Frost bottom layer, then set the second layer on and frost that. Quickly coat the two-layer cake with coconut before the frosting has set.

Fold the white construction paper in half lengthwise. Draw the shape of pointy bunny ears on the folded paper. Cut out the two ears.

Fold the pink construction paper in half. Draw the shape of the bunny ears slightly smaller than the white ones. Cut out pink ears.

Glue the pink to the white ears. Fold the ears from the bottom to about one-third up and insert ears at an appropriate area at one edge of the cake, inserting them on a slight angle.

Put the two pink jelly beans for the eyes in appropriate spots along a line about half-way across the cake. Put in the black jelly bean for the nose, a bit below the eyes, and put three toothpicks on each side of the “nose” (that’s six toothpicks, total), and you have a bunny-faced cake.

I do my Easter cake a bit differently, as I have a half-melon shaped mold that I use for the body of the bunny. I use three cupcake pans, as well. One is for the head. I cut one in half for the back legs and use part of the third one for the tail.

It looks quite good.

Again, Happy Easter!