Book Adventures: (PicBk) Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells + 2 Cake Recipes!

Easter and bunnies. To learn how that ever happened, click here. In light of this, today's recipe is inspired by Rosemary Wells' Bunny Cakes, a Max & Ruby story. Even though it's not about Easter, but the birthday of the characters' grandmother, it's a story about bunnies. Awesome and funny bunnies. Because Rosemary Wells knows how to do it.

For a Max & Ruby Easter, check out Max's Chocolate Chicken. For a reading and reenactment of the story, watch the video at the end of this post.

(From Goodreads)

It's Grandma's birthday, and Max wants to make her an icky, worm-infested cake. But Ruby says, "No, Max. We are going to make Grandma an angel surprise cake, with raspberry-fluff icing." Will Max let his bossy older sister keep him out of the kitchen? Or will they both become bunnies who bake?

Read Bunny Cakes online @ We Give Books!

Ruby's Angel Surprise Cake with Raspberry Fluff Icing

Recipe directly from Laurie @ Family Theme Night, author of Let the Adventure Begin! Theme Nights for Families with Young Children.
(For images and to comment on the recipe, please visit her blog.)

(Image from Deb @ "Living it up!". Ruby's cake is the puffy-looking pink one.)

Ingredients:

-Angel Food Cake, prepared

-1 package raspberries (I used frozen and thawed)

-1 16 ounce container of whipped topping

-decorative sprinkles

Directions:

For this cake, I purchased an angel food cake and made the "frosting."

I crushed the raspberries using a blender, and then mixed the whipped topping with the raspberries and raspberry juice. It made the whipped topping a nice pink and flavored it at the same time.

After frosting the angel food cake with the frosting mixture, I added the decorative sprinkles.

Max's Earthworm Cake

Recipe directly from Kaori @ "koala brains"

(For more images and to comment on the recipe, please visit her blog.)

Ingredients:
- 2 boxes of cake mix & ingredients to make them
- 2 large boxes of chocolate pudding mix & milk
- chocolate graham crackers
- gummy worms (Market Pantry brand from Target - these worms are long)
- Dots candy (the red ones for the red hot marshmallow squirters)
- confectioner's sugar
- green food coloring.

Directions:

There are 2 sleeves of graham crackers in the box. I crushed the contents of one of the sleeves before I opened it. Most of crumbs are finely crushed but I left some of them bigger so it would look more like dirt.

I made the chocolate pudding as directed except I reduced the amount of milk from 6 cups to 4 cups, which made it nice and thick so it would stick to the cake like frosting.

Bake cake in 9" round pans. 2 boxes will yield 4 cake pans. Once cooled, stack all four on top of each other. Using an electric knife, shave off the edges so it's the shape of a mountain. Now place the bottom cake layer on the plate you will serve the cake. Apply a layer of pudding on the layer then add the next layer, add some pudding on it, add another layer, and so on. Apply the pudding to the exterior of the cake.

Cover the cake with the chocolate graham cracker crumbs. This is going to be messy because you are going to have to throw the crumbs to the sides of the cake (I guess you can tilt the cake and sprinkle the crumbs but throwing is more fun!). It'll stick to the pudding easily.

Here comes the fun part. Poke holes into the cake using chopsticks. I had to poke then dig around to make the hole big enough for the gummy worms to fit. Push the worms into the holes.

I made the caterpillar icing by melting 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan then stirred in 1 cup of confectioner's sugar then I added 1 1/2 tablespoons of water and 2 drops of green food dye. After it cooled for a few minutes, I drizzled it over the cake. I probably used half of the icing.

Top it off with a few red Dots candies and voila, you have Max's earthworm cake!

Fun Stuff: