Easter Decorating & Homemade Cake Recipe
Can you believe we are only a few weeks from Easter already?
Whenever Easter Sunday falls in March it sneaks up on me. It is usually still very cold and not very spring-like. This year we have had many warm days already in New Jersey which has me more ready than I usually feel.
On one such beautiful day recently I stopped in Trader Joe’s and left with a few bunches of daffodils. They were just what I needed to add a little color to my hutch and inspire my Easter decorating.
The flowers, along with a couple of wooden bunnies were all this area needed for Spring decor. The hutch is an easy area to swap out seasonally.
For our Easter table, I also kept it simple with only a few accents. I found these wooden eggs online and scooped them up right away. They even come with an egg crate. I was going to put them in something else for my Easter decorating, but decided they were perfect as is.
I used leftover acrylic paints I had left from my birdhouse gourds to paint those in light pastel colors.
At each place setting, I made a wooden cross using pieces of grapevine. A nod to what the Easter holiday is really all about.
Here you can see some of my simple white spring dishes and a pretty Spring cake I made.
The cake started as an experiment. I wanted to try and learn to get the ribbon effect with icing. That did not go well (so much harder than it looks!) so I ended up decorating it with roses that I made from icing instead.
I topped it off with little butterfly picks. While I couldn’t find a link to those online, I did find these butterfly cake toppers that are even prettier AND they’re edible!
I did make the cake recipe from scratch, so I’ll add that recipe here. at the end of this post. When I began to make this cake, the cake mix I had bought was missing so I had to get creative.
Aside from trying out different icing techniques, I was also experimenting with adding an extra layer to the cake.
I baked two regular 8″ cakes and a third in a 7″ round pan. The 7″ was a little too big so I cut it down with a 6″ round cake cutter I have.
That worked better to leave enough space around the bottom layers. If you decide to layer your cakes like this, remember to pick up extra icing, or make homemade icing.
The recipe in this post is enough to make the two 8″ cake pans. I mixed up a second batch, cutting the recipe in half, for the third, 7″ pan.
The icing I used on this cake is homemade buttercream I picked up recently from an Amish market.
As for my Easter flowers, I also wanted to share this Hellebore plant I picked up. I’ve been wanting to plant these in my yard for a few years. I saw some in the fall at Terrain but they were way too expensive.
Then I saw them a few weeks ago at Shop Rite and they were also pricey at $30 for a pot just like the one below. When I walked in Trader Joe’s and saw this one for $11.99 I snatched it right up!
You can plant these outside and they’ll come back every year. And they bloom outside in winter, around this time of year!
In the meantime, I’m enjoying all the Trader Joe’s flowers that I can!
Happy Spring!
Homemade Cake Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/4 cup milk
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 stick butter softened
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 3 eggs
Instructions
- In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
- Place softened butter into a bowl or electric mixer and mix for 1 minute.
- Add dry ingredients to the butter slowly until combined with the butter.
- Add in the milk, oil, vanilla extract and eggs. Mix until well blended.
- Pour into 2 greased round cake pans and bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Such cute ideas. The eggs in the carton are adorable.
Everything looks so fresh.
The cake looks delicious.
Thank you, I’ll save you a piece. 🙂