Easter Egg Cake

Here is a family recipe. Well, it’s not really a “recipe” at this point, since we use an angel food cake mix, so it’s more of a technique. Or an idea. This is something my Grandma Renner used to make for an Easter dessert, and my mom makes it, too. So of course, I’m next in line. I guess that makes sense.

Easter Egg Cake

You will need: angel food cake mix, white icing, food coloring, several small bowls (like cereal bowls), angel food cake pan (with removable bottom) and a bottle to stand it upside down on, if the cake pan doesn’t have those little lifter-things. Decorations can include shredded coconut that you’ve colored green with a few drops of food coloring, jelly beans, edible flowers such as pansies, and so on.

Of course, when making angel food cake, you can’t let any kind of grease get into the batter, so all bowls, spoons, mixer beaters, etc. should be clean and not oily.

Preheat the oven and mix up your angel food cake batter per the package directions. Have several bowls at hand. Reserving some of the plain cake batter in the original mixing bowl and working quickly, spoon out the rest of the batter into approximately six smaller bowls—well, one for each intended color. Read on.

Squeeze drops of food coloring into the bowls of batter and stir gently to mix. Red/pink, green, yellow, blue, orange, purple. Whatever; get creative. The uncolored batter of course will be white. Oh, and the colors of the finished cake will be darker than they seem in the batter.

Gently dollop the various colors of batter into the angel food cake pan, alternating colors as you go.

Once you’ve blobbed all the colors of batter into the pan, carefully run a knife through the batter a few times to eliminate air bubbles (and to create a groovy swirly pattern).

Bake the cake per package directions and turn it upside down like you’re supposed to.

Before you do anything else, let it cool completely.

Then carefully remove it from the pan and set it on your serving platter. Brush the crumbs off the top and sides. Carefully ice it with the white-colored icing of your choice. Icing an angel food cake is tricky. It helps to dip the spatula in warm water every once in a while.

We usually stick some colorful jelly beans on top as decoration. Dyed-green coconut can hide the places on top where cake crumbs got into the icing, because you concentrated on getting the sides iced just right and kind of ran out.

One year my mom made a little “vase” for some daffodils using soggy paper towels wrapped with aluminum foil and stuck them in the hole in the middle. It was so pretty when we brought it to Jeff City to share with Grandma Renner on Easter Sunday.

Serving: Well, you could put ice cream with it, I suppose, but I’m partial to sliced strawberries this time of year.

Of course, the colors inside the cake are a big surprise. Everybody is supposed to inspect his or her slice and count the colors they got. Whoever has the most colors wins the contest.

Happy Easter!