Gluten Free Easter Bunny Coconut Cake

It's not too late to make this cute Easter bunny-shaped gluten free coconut cake to share with your family this Sunday. It's easy and delicious and is a perfect project to do with your kids!

My birthday is at the end of March, which is always close to Easter, sometimes even ON Easter. When I was growing up, my mom used to make all our birthday cakes. She had so special pans to create unique shapes. She would just bake cakes into rounds or rectangles and then cut them up to look like whatever she was making.

For me, it was always either a bunny cake or an Easter basket, butterfly, or something to represent spring. And because I loved coconut, it was covered in coconut! The cakes were always SO good!!

Since I've been on a cake baking roll lately, I thought I'd go down memory lane and bake an interpretation of my mom's birthday cake, complete with flour frosting. What? Flour frosting?? What in the WORLD is flour frosting, you ask? We'll get into all the details of that in a minute. But first, let's talk cake!

Gluten Free Coconut Cake

I vividly remember my birthday cakes growing up because they were so pretty and SO yummy!!! I always thought my mom made the cakes from scratch, but she recently told me she used a box mix. That's one thing about box mixes--they're always so light and fluffy, which can be hard to duplicate with a homemade cake.

And then there are gluten free boxed mixes. Whole different ballgame, at least in my opinion. The chocolate ones aren't bad, but I have yet to find a good-enough-to-eat vanilla (or yellow) gf boxed cake mix. They always taste of chemicals to me. So we'll just have to make our own. Here's what you'll need:

• Kim's gluten free flour blend--or your favorite blend containing xanthan gum
• Granulated sugar
• Eggs
• Oil--canola, vegetable or any neutral oil
• Baking powder
• Salt
• Milk
• Sour cream
• Vanilla extract

This cake is so simple to blend together. It can be done in a stand mixer, with a handheld mixer, or in a large bowl with a spoon. Beat the sugar, eggs, and oil until well blended. Add the sour cream and vanilla extract and mix to combine.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Alternate adding the flour mixture with the milk in two additions, mixing only until combined. Don't overmix.

Fill a well-greased 9-inch round and 8-inch round cake pan ¾ of the way with cake batter and bake at 350 degrees F for about 40-45 minutes, or until cakes spring back when lightly touched, or when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cutting the Cakes to Make a Bunny

It's super easy to cut up these cakes to make the cutest little bunny rabbit ever! Leave the 9-inch cake whole and intact, but with the 8-inch round, cut two curves on each side, almost as if you're cutting down lines in a tennis ball. These will be your ears. The middle piece will be the bowtie.

Making the Flour Frosting

Now let's talk about this flour frosting. I guess back in my grandma's baking days (where this frosting recipe originated), powdered sugar wasn't widely available. And maybe eggs weren't thought of to use for frosting, at least in America.

Enter flour frosting. It goes by a few other names, as I found in my research--Ermine, roux, and boiled milk frostings. They're all the same thing--milk and flour (in our case, xanthan gum-free flour blend) are boiled until a paste forms, allowed to cool, and then butter and granulated sugar are added. Beaten together, the mixture transforms into a light and airy whipped frosting that's smooth and not too sweet.

A coconut simple syrup brushed on the cake layers before frosting the cake drives the coconut flavor home. Then when sweetened shredded coconut is sprinkled on top of the whipped flour frosting, an ordinary yellow cake becomes a delightfully delicious coconut cake!

When you've frosted the cake and are ready to add the coconut, put parchment paper on those spots you want to cover with either tinted coconut or sprinkles. Then you can remove the parchment and add your colored coconut or sprinkles!

How to Color Coconut

Place the desired amount of coconut in a small baggie and add a few drops of liquid or gel food coloring. Close the bag and squish the coconut around in the bag until all the coconut is a uniform color.

Even with everything going on in the world these days, make this cute Easter bunny gluten free coconut cake to brighten your days and give you and your kids a new project to work on. Plus, the end result is not just adorable, but delicious too!