bunny cake

April 14, 2020

Growing up, Easter was always my favorite holiday due to the season: spring, and the food, chocolate being my favorite food group. Easter was usually spent with family at my gram's, including an aunt and uncle and cousins, complete with tons of food. Some traditional Slovak dishes like a cold buttermilk soup were always on the table (I have no idea what it's called because the thought of it made me gag.)

One staple that everyone loved was my mother's bunny cake. Usually a white cake with sugar icing, it was always the desert for the day and always a fun one to decorate, complete with dye-greened coconut for grass and black jelly beans for eyes, a nose, and whiskers.

While this holiday ritual was always spent at my gram's and then later my mum's, since having a child myself, we have created new rituals centered around our new family, which includes friends and community members in my Brooklyn neighborhood of Bed Stuy. Until this year, these rituals included a community-wide Easter egg hunt in the park for the kids in our neighborhood, or a trip to Coney Island with friends one exceptionally warm holiday for an Easter dinner courtesy of Nathan's. The meal and those with whom we shared it changed each year. Despite having the cake mold from my mum for eons, I never baked the bunny cake for the holiday.

COVID-19 has changed everything about this holiday, which also happens to be my daughter's favorite (for similar reasons--the apple does not fall far from the tree). There was no egg hunt this year, no fun with friends, and barely any time outside enjoying the spring season. Her dad and his partner also have a new baby and so she has a new baby sister this year to share the holiday. We thought this would be a good year to take out the mold, bake a cake, and share it with family, much like I did growing up.

We are still co-parenting and since we are all keeping pretty strict standards about where we go and with whom we gather during the pandemic, we shared this holiday together. So I baked the cake, my daughter frosted it with a cream cheese frosting, and we shared it as a family. It wasn't a white cake but a carrot one, and I just followed the best recipe I could find online.

For me it never was about the taste of the cake (I'm actually more of a pie person.) It's not the recipe that continues to hold meaning but the physical cake and its material presence. In this strange dystopian moment, perhaps it's the magic of that bunny, (or in this case a Maltese dog since that's what it kind of ended up looking like!) that brought a smile to everyone's faces, even if just for a brief moment, and filled our bellies and hearts with gratitude.

Follow your favorite carrot cake recipe. Here are a few we like:

Favorite Carrot Cake

Carrot Cake with Olive Oil and Cider

One-Bowl Vegan. Gluten-Free Carrot Cake

Bunny Cake

A bunny mold can be found online. Click here for one option.

Kelly Britt is an urban archaeologist and a want-to-be urban planner obsessed with material culture. She's also a yogi mum and dosa lover.