By Heath Goldman for Food Network Kitchen

Heath Goldman is a culinary editor at Food Network.

Come Easter, you might want to up the ante with an adorable bunny cake. It’s totally possible to make one without buying a fancy bunny pan that’ll cost you a pretty penny and take up cabinet space the rest of the year. Below, some detailed instructions on achieve this adorable look.

How to Make a Flat Bunny Cake with Round Cake Pans

This type of bunny cake is simple to create and super classic. To pull off this technique, all you need are two round cake layers, frosting and a knife.

The most typical version of this bunny cake is vanilla cake decorated in vanilla frosting and shredded coconut flakes. However, you can use whatever variety of cake you wish, whether it’s chocolate, vanilla, red velvet, strawberry — you name it. You can also decorate it however you choose. Because the bunny shape is so easy to create, it becomes a fun canvas that you can customize with fancy piping. Or let your kids get involved and decorate it with simple candy.

Here, we’ll walk you through how to make a chocolate bunny cake that’s every bit as pretty as the velveteen rabbit himself.

What You’ll Need

Two 8-inch round cake layers, chilled

Long serrated knife

Medium bowl

Paring Knife

4 cups buttercream frosting

Offset spatula or butter knife

Gel food coloring, sprinkles and candy, as necessary

How to Cut the Bunny Cake

1. Trim the cakes. With a long serrated knife, cut the domed surface off of each cake to level the cakes. You want to work with totally flat cakes, not domed ones. Reserve the cake scraps in a medium bowl.

2. Create the head. Cut a 1.5-inch crescent moon-shaped slice off the end of one cake layer. Reserve the cake trimming in your scraps bowl.

3. Create the ears and bow. Cut the second cake layer into three pieces as follows. Cut an almond-shaped piece of cake from the left side of the cake layer and another one from the right side of the layer. If you look at the shapes together, they’ll sort of look like a baseball or a tennis ball.

4. Transfer to a serving platter and frost. Transfer the head to the center of the serving platter. Place the flat side of the ears on top of the head, and the bow beneath the head. Frost the bunny all over with frosting. An offset spatula helps achieve a smooth look, but you can also use a butter knife.

5. Crumble the cake scraps and press them around the sides of the cake. Roll the cake scraps between your fingers until they turn into crumbs, then press these crumbs all over the sides of the cake. This will give your bunny a fluffy look, as well as make your edges appear neater.

6. Decorate away! Here’s how we decorated this bunny cake. We frosted the whole chocolate cake with a the glossy chocolate buttercream — Ina's version is a classic. Then, we dyed 1 cup of buttercream frosting with pink gel food coloring to create a darker pink and a lighter pink shade. We piped the lighter shade of pink to create ears and cheeks. We piped the darker shade all over the bow, and topped it with rainbow sprinkles. To create the nose, mouth, eyes and whiskers, we used a tube of black decorating icing.

How to Make a 3-D Bunny with Round Cake Pans

Want to make a bunny cake that's a little more challenging? You can also make this 3-D bunny cake, which also just requires round cake pans. In fact, we have a full recipe that you can check out here. Although this endeavor isn’t too hard, you’ll definitely need to channel your inner sculptor.

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