Halloween is around the corner, and it’s full of the usual fun—pumpkins, ghosts, witches, and candy. Let’s add a new pal to the crew—Mutant Bunny cake!

I’m a big fan of a non-scary Halloween, and I wanted to make a cake that had just enough Halloween weirdness but still maintained the cute factor. I imagined a fluffy white curious bunny making its way to the big city from the forest, only to be scooped up by a mad scientist intent on creating a new species in his colorful laboratory. Or, perhaps he is a mutant alien bunny from a far away planet! Whatever story you spin, rest assured that with this mutant bunny cake, your Halloween party will be all set! This guy would also be a fun cake for a monster- or alien-themed birthday party.

Left to right: ears and eyes made from fondant and large and small piping tips

What You Need

• A two layer, round vanilla cake recipe of your choice—baked from scratch or from the box. Optional: I dyed my vanilla cake layers with pink gel color. Do it, it looks so cute! Simply blend in pink gel color to your cake batter before pouring into cake pans for baking.
• 4 cups of vanilla buttercream or 2 cans of frosting
• Blue gel food coloring
• An offset spatula or butter knife
• A bench scraper
• A piping bag fitted with a multi-opening tip (also known as “grass” tip)—I used the Wilton #234 tip
• A 5-inch ball of fondant (white with some tinted blue for the ears, pink for the nose and ear centers, and black for the pupils)
• Parchment paper
• Cornstarch for working with fondant
• Rolling pin
• Minicircle cutters for making “eyes”—I use the larger ends of the piping tips as circle cutters.
• A long wooden BBQ skewer, cut into two equal-length sticks

Step 1
Bake your cake according to the recipe instructions. Let cakes cool completely on wire racks in their pans.

Step 2
Make your buttercream according to the recipe instructions. Add a small amount of sky-blue gel food coloring to tint it blue.

Step 3
Place a dab of buttercream on a cake plate or cardboard cake board.

Step 4
Carefully remove your first cake layer from your cake pan. Use a serrated knife to level your cake so the top is flat.

Step 5
Place the cake cut side up on the cake plate on top of the dab of buttercream to adhere.

Step 6
Using an offset spatula or butter knife, spread a layer of buttercream on top. Remove your second layer from your cake pan, leveling it as you did with the first layer. Place the second layer cut side down onto the first frosted layer.

Step 7
Next, frost the entire exterior of the cake.

Step 8
Using your bench scraper, smooth your buttercream. Get your piping bag ready! Time to pipe some hairy, blue mutant bunny fur!

Step 9
Begin to pipe your bunny fur. Start from the bottom and pipe your way up in lines.

Step 10
Continue piping until your cake sides are completely covered in fur.

Step 11
Make your fondant accoutrements. Roll out your white fondant to ¼-inch thick. Using your circle cutters or piping tips, cut out circles for eyes in a few sizes. Roll out a little bit of black fondant to ¼-inch thick. Cut out circles for black irises with smaller cutters. Adhere to white circles with a dot of water. Add little dots of white fondant for cartoon eyes, adhering with a tiny dot of water. Create two 1-inch white fondant balls. Squish them down flat to create the bunny cheeks. Roll a small amount of pink fondant into a ball for the nose. Create two blue bunny ears by rolling blue fondant into tubelike shapes. Using a small amount of pink fondant, create inner ears. Adhere with a little bit of water. Push BBQ skewers into each ear. Make white triangle teeth by rolling out white fondant and cutting out triangles with a paring knife.

Step 12
Start placing your eyeballs on your face!

Step 13
Place the rest of your eyeballs and the bunny cheeks.

Step 14
Now, use your piping bag and pipe fur all around the eyes and cheeks.

Step 15
Keep on piping and fill in the face. Once the face is fully furry, place the pink nose and triangle teeth. Plunk the fondant ears into the side of the cake and pipe more fur on top of the ears.

Party time! I used a circle craft punch to create confetti out of cute striped paper for my party table. This guy has some pointy triangle incisors!

Surprise! Mutant bunny cake has pink insides. This cake’s giving you the hairy eyeball—you better eat it before it eats you.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and I’ll see you again real soon.