Bunny Cakes & Buttercream Roses

About author / Christine Gable

Culinary enthusiast; kids cuisine and slow cooking; magazine recipe developer; professional writer. Her simple recipes are great for family dinners.

Buttercream roses.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

And it’s a phrase that sure grabbed my daughter’s attention.

Buttercream roses entered our life with the book Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells.

For me, buttercream roses conjure up cobbled stone pathways, shady hedges, thatched roof cottages and tea in the garden. Yes, I can see why they caught my daughter’s attention when we read this book. Not only is it a Max and Ruby adventure that takes place in the kitchen, the pictures show a cozy cottage kitchen. It just makes me want to go and whip something up.

Words, foods, and their delectable combinations caught my daughter’s attention ever since she could put her first words together. At age three, she began asking so many questions about the where, how and why of words—morning, noon and night—that we invested in a reference tome to answer her questions: The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Now that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? But it’s quite simple really. Etymology is the study of the origins of words and how they’ve changed over time.

So, of course, we looked up buttercream roses.

Butter – comes from butere, an Old English word, and the Old High German butera

Cream – originates from crème, Middle English and Old French

Rose – from the Old English rosa

Yes, the very combination “buttercream roses” itself originates from several Old English words which are in themselves as old as time. Maybe that’s why I think of old European vistas when I hear the phrase.

Or maybe it was just cute little bunny Max on the front cover, sitting in the yellow mixing bowl with a whisk that inspired us to choose this library book … after all, we do have a bunny in the house now. Angel joined our clan at Christmastime, when she came hopping into my daughter’s heart. Bunnies are quiet and easy-to-care for, and Angel has been encouraging the all-important development of character traits of responsibility and dependability in an almost 9-year-old. But who would have thought a furry, huggable, hoppy little dwarf bunny could actually inspire kitchen adventures?

That just goes to show you that kitchen inspiration can be found almost anywhere—as long as you keep your eyes (and heart) open. And in this case, it even brings the fun and intriguing skill of cake frosting—and using a pastry bag with tips—into the equation. All because of buttercream roses. And reading together.

Most kids love icing cakes—it’s new and exciting—and doesn’t happen in their world very often! Often we adults are the ones who shy away from the mess and drama of it.

Yet if you mix up a small batch and do just one pastry bag with only one cup of icing, not only is it a small (and manageable) endeavor, it’s also a lesser amount of sugar—and it’s safe to say that no one needs four cups of sugary icing on top of an already sweet cake.

But even if you don’t want to go on a buttercream rose and frosting adventure, I encourage you to check out Bunny Cakes. It’s just a fun story for kids ages 2-10.

And who knows, maybe someone at your house will even be inspired to bake a cake—raspberry-fluff icing, buttercream roses and Red-Hot Marshmallow Squirters notwithstanding.

Serves/Makes: 1

• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1/8 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons milk (more if needed)