Preheat your oven to 350 (175 celsius). You can use a box of white cake mix or make your own recipe at home.

Cream together 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup unsalted butter. Add in two eggs, and mix in 2 teaspoons of vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour and 1 ¾ teaspoons baking powder. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. Add ½ a cup of milk and stir until the cake batter is smooth.

Pour the batter into two 9-inch cake pans. You should line the bottom of your cake pans with parchment paper and grease the sides; I find this helps the cake to ‘release’ more easily. Bake for 20 minutes or until the cake springs back when lightly touched. Cool your cake completely then wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it. If you’d prefer not to work with a frozen cake you can put it in the fridge for 10 minutes to make it nice and cold, rather than frozen.

Make your vanilla buttercream frosting with 1 cup of butter and about 4.5 cups of icing sugar, 1 teaspoon of vanilla and 2 tsp of cream or whole milk. Blend it in a large bowl with a hand mixer or stand mixer until it’s fully mixed and no sugar crystals remain.

Scoop a small amount (2-3 tablespoons) of your white buttercream frosting into a separate bowl and add two drops of pink food coloring. You’ll use this to create ‘ears’ and a ‘nose’ later.

I did not trim the outer edges or top of this bunny cake to make it flat but you can trim them if your cake has crispy edges or a very high dome in the centre.

One of your cakes will remain an intact circle to create the bunny face. The second cake you will cut into two ear shapes. I held a large round plate on top of the cake and traced around it with a sharp knife to create score lines. Then I carefully cut through the score lines on a cutting board.

You’ll notice the ends of the ears are pointy on both sides. Trim the bottom of your ears a tiny bit like I show in the photo so the ears can sit more flush on top of the bunny's head.

Before you start using your grass tip to make shaggy bunny fur frosting, add your colored frosting details.

I used a dull butter knife to spread pink frosting on the inner ears and nose to create a rough shape. I like the way the serrated edge of the knife leaves ridges. You could, alternatively, use a cake spatula for a smooth effect.

I used pink icing to decorate the bunny ears and nose first. Then I added black icing to the same bowl so I wasn’t wasting any leftover pink frosting. I used black icing to create the eyes. I wanted to be a bit more precise with placing the black icing because it will show through the white frosting fur more easily than the pink does. Use a piping bag or plastic bag with the tip cut off and fill it with a tablespoon of black icing, to create your circular bunny eyes.

Set aside the rest of your black icing; you can use it later for the mouth and whiskers.

Use piping tip #233, a grass tip, to give your adorable bunny cake a shaggy look. Fill your piping bag ½ full with white icing. If your bag is too full it can be hard to get the right amount of pressure to use this piping tip correctly.

Start with the inside of your bunny cake ears. It will be harder to reach them when they are placed nicely and close together.

Once the inside of the ears are done, begin with the bottom layer of your cake working your way around the whole thing to put layers of shaggy frosting on your white bunny cake.

Squeeze, gently press into the cake, continue squeezing, then pull away slowly to create the fur. Stop squeezing and pull away from the cake. The longer you pull away from the cake, the longer the white frosting fur will be. Take breaks if your hands get sore during this step. Work your way slowly up the side of the cake.

Once the inside of the ears and outer edges of the cake are frosted, move on to the top of the cake.

Outline your bunny cake's ears, nose, and eyes first to get a clean contrasting look. Then fill in the top of the cake working from the outside in so the frosting fur all lays in the same direction to make it look tidy.

You can use the same piping bag full of black frosting for the mouth and whiskers that you used to decorate the bunny cake eyes earlier.

Go slowly and take your time with the black icing. Make a happy curved mouth coming down from the nose. Then add three whiskers. I chose to do two short whiskers and one long whisker in the center on both sides of my bunny cake