By Samuel Blazier

Bartolo “Buddy” Valastro Jr., also known as the “Cake Boss” once said,  “Cakes are special. Every birthday, every celebration ends with something sweet, a cake, and people remember. It’s all about the memories.”

These words from Valastro couldn’t be more true for the cake my family bakes for every Easter: Bunny Cake.

With a circular face, enlarged rabbit ears, and a bow tie made out of sponges and covered with white frosting and white coconut, the memories of seeing that bunny face cake covered in coconut is a tradition of Easter that goes back as far back as I can remember. It also has been a tradition since my mom was a child.

“My mom, Mimi, made the bunny cake every Easter that I can remember. It was my favorite cake because it was cute and had candy and coconut (I loved coconut and still love coconut). I am pretty sure that Mimi got the “recipe” out of a newspaper or magazine, probably as an advertisement for a company like Pillsbury or Betty Crocker.”

The actual photo can be seen attached to this article. The rest of my family also enjoys this Easter treat, as my dad said, “I don’t particularly care for coconut, but the way coconut is used on the Bunny Cake I enjoy.”

It’s not easy to convince someone to like something that they normally don’t, but when that happens, that’s when you know that the food is good. My sister also shares the pleasure of enjoying the Bunny Cake, and once said that “I like how there’s a different piece for everybody, and that you can do whatever you want while making it.”

My sister loves to be creative, and the cake is her blank canvas to add her own twists.

Making a cake yourself might seem like too much work, but it’s necessary on Easter because you probably can’t buy a Bunny Cake anymore since a design from the 1970s. Also, when you buy a cake from a grocery store such as Jewel Osco or Costco, you might get good flavors in the cake, but you’ll never feel the love and work that was put in in order to get to the point where your cake is sitting on the table. To put it in another way, there may be new and improved ways to make a cake, but new and improved doesn’t always mean that things will be better.

All in all, the tradition of having this Bunny Cake in my family is so special. So many memories surround this magnificent recipe, and I strive to continue this amazing family tradition. These days, I have great confidence that this timeless tradition will continue to live on, as my sister has now started to take up this rite of passage. After all of these years of happy memories, I can confidently say that it’s true when people say that memories are priceless.