Hippity Hop Hop

Ugh. I don't even want to talk about the disaster that was my Easter baking experience. But if I didn't want to talk about it, I guess I shouldn't have started this blog, so...touche. Here's what happened. I decided that this Easter I needed to make a cake in the shape of a adorable springtime animal. See the thing is that when I was younger my mother used to make a cake in the shape of a lamb every Easter and it was secretly my favorite dessert of the year. I actually just had a thought: maybe my jeans would be a smaller size if I didn't do things like rank dessert favorites...

Anyhoo, in my mind, the lamb mold was made of cast iron and weighed approximately 900 lbs, so I didn't even bother asking my mother to mail it to me and went in search of my very own lamb pan. (In actuality, it's made of aluminum and weighs next to nothing. Crap.) So it turns out that Wilton makes a lamb mold, which is sold at basically every store in the world short of Checker Auto Parts around Easter time. It also turns out that this particular lamb mold has an incredibly creepy smile and eyes that follow you no matter where you are in the room. I chose the bunny cake pan on the next shelf. Demonic lamb cake did not seem like the most appropriate of dessert options.

I digress. At some point in the past week I decided that I needed to also make cupcakes that looked like Easter baskets. I have no idea why, so don't ask me. So, sometime around 8pm on Saturday night I decided I should probably start the baking process, since I needed to be at Marie's house around 11am the next morning. Now, the bunny mold is 3D and has a small vent hole in the top. The directions clearly stated that the cake would be done when a toothpick inserted into the vent hole came out clean. Therefore, like any reasonable person would do, I took it out of the oven when the toothpick came out clean. Duh. Now here's a detail you need to remember: I, for a reason unbeknownst to me, turned off the oven at this point. I also put the cupcakes into said turned off oven. While the cupcakes were (not) baking I opened up the bunny mold and was instantly covered in molten cake batter. Turns out it was NOT done. And neither were the cupcakes. Cause generally one needs to turn on an oven in order to bake things. Who knew? Whatever, I remembered while at the grocery store at 10:45pm replenishing ingredients that I had forgotten to put oil in the cupcakes anyway, so even if they had cooked, they were missing a key ingredient. Once i remade them I decided to let them cool and decorate them before I went to bed. I dyed the frosting green and then coated them in light green crystal sugar. The handles are Sour Punch Straws. So cute right? Here's what they looked like when I went to bed. Which was 2 am.

Here's what they looked like when I woke.

Can ANYONE explain why they all broke in the middle?! I nearly cried.

So here's the point where I show you a million pictures of my completed bunny cake to make myself feel better about my baking disaster. Luckily the second cake was delicious and fully cooked. The grass is the ever popular dyed coconut, all the flowers are made by me out of fondant, and the eggs are Bailey's favorite mini Cadbury eggs.

How does one cut a cake like this without feeling like some sort of sick bunny killer? Next time I'll make it red velvet. Oh yeah, Mom, I have brown hair now.