Easter Bunny Hunt Cake

Easter Bunny Hunt Cake Chef Alex Guarnaschelli I love an almond cake for some reason I associate it with Easter and today I am a making an Easter Bunny Hunt Cake. Normally we go around the yard looking for eggs. I get everybody eating cake. I thought I would hide this little rabbit figurine inside the cake and whoever gets to the slice of cake with the figurine in it is the winner of the Easter Cake and we’re going to start by cleaning some butter. Take 1 stick plus 1 tablespoon of butter at room temperature and just beat that up piece of tart then I’m going to add ½ a cup plus a tablespoon of granulated sugar. Now when it’s nice and smooth with 2 ingredients we’re going to add 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk so I separate out that white. I’m just going to give that another little whip. Each time you add something you want to just integrate it before you add something else and don’t be afraid to scrape the sides a little bit to make sure you’re really integrating all these ingredients. Add a tablespoon of orange liqueur, a teaspoon of Almond extract and then ½ a teaspoon of vanilla extract you see so we have these sort of all this wonderful little flavors, okay so we’ll make a house for our little rabbit figurine on these things. Add a half a cup of this ground almond. Now just to hold it all together, a tablespoon of flour to have that right in, stir it and that is the filming for the cake. It’s time to say goodbye to our –we will find him to the other side of this cake and just gently mix it so they can’t see it and now I’m letting you assemble this cake. I have two rounds of cup pastry 11 and 12 inches in diameter respectively an the larger one is going to be for the top of the cake I like just thoroughly egg wash the edges of the bottom and then I’m not looking I can’t see the rabbit I honestly can’t. I’m just going to put the filling and now I’m just going to lay that gently on top and even out all those edges and then we just want to crimp all the edges and this is just sort of to close it up some more of that egg wash and not a really more than anything so sure that when it comes out of the oven we’ll have a beautiful golden brown color and when this cooks we’re going to cook this at 400 degrees those puff pastry really needs to be started at a high temperature so that it pops up a lot really cooks through. You can see this is all nice and puffy and golden brown and that egg wash really helps. Now I know your supposed to let cakes sit but I’m so anxious to see if I find the rabbit and I’m so anxious to cut into this that I’m not going to wait. You can see how it’s nice and puffy. You can see this is very dramatic and it will fall a little bit as it cools. You know I can’t really see that rabbit anywhere inside there. It looks kind of nice when you make the cake and you don’t find it because if you serve this to your family and friends someone will and that’s what makes this cake really special to Easter.