Seasons > Easter > Activities for the Home > More Easter Cakes > Cookie trees and carrot cake recipe
Seasons > Easter > Activities for the Home > More Easter Cakes > Cookie trees and carrot cake recipe
To make this resurrection cake, bake a cake in a bundt pan and cut it off center so the hole is on one side. Then embellish it with details to make it look “real”--a cookie “grave stone,” a chocolate “pebble” path, green coconut grass, or Oreo crumb “dirt.” Cornflakes or other cereal make a good ground cover, too. Make trees from celery hearts, carrot tops, broccoli, or fresh herbs such as parsley or rosemary. An alternative is to use fake miniature trees that are made for train model sets or miniature houses.
Cherry Trees
Make tree trunks by melting chocolate and dripping it onto a small square of tinfoil in the bottom of a glass. While the chocolate is still soft, put pretzel sticks (Toppo or Pokky) into it, and let them rest against the edge of the glass so the “branches” of the tree splay out wider than the base. Once the chocolate has hardened, lift the whole thing out of the glass and peel off the tinfoil. Then top with pink cotton candy to look like cherry trees, or green tinted rice crispy cookies for a green leafy top to the tree. If you use cotton candy, put it on at the last minute because it will quickly melt from absorbing any moisture in the air. An easier way to make the tree trunk is to put 3 pretzels in a coke cap, and stuff cotton candy around them until they do not wobble.
Weeping Willow Trees
Make weeping willow trees by cutting lengths of spaghetti gummy candy and tying them to cigar cookies with thread. Do this in 2 or 3 places, and make sure that the first batch is tied quite close to the end, or you will end up with a bare cookie trunk sticking up above the foliage. Poke a chopstick or skewer into a muffin top (amashoku), then slide the cigar cookies over the chopstick, and top with the cookie that has the gummy spaghetti tied to it. If the top of the cookie still shows, add a few more pieces of spaghetti into the hole in the end of the cookie roll.
Palm Trees
Use muffin tops (amashoku) for the base of trees. Poke chopsticks or skewers into the bases, then slide cigar cookies onto them to form the trunks of the trees. Cut green plastic to look like palm leaves and tie them in several layers to the top cookie before sliding it onto the chopstick. Although these leaves are not edible, it is the best way to make palm leaves that I have been able to think of. I have tried green gum, fondant, and gummy candy, but all are too heavy and brittle and break while i am still trying to make them.
Where to find it in Japan
The cigar cookies were purchased at a 100 yen store. The muffin tops (amashoku) are sold at many grocery stores. The spaghetti candy is sold in stores that sell imported goods.
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This end becomes the tops of trees
slide this end onto chopstick
Carrot top “Trees”
You have to start 2 or 3 weeks in advance for these. Cut of tops of carrots, and put them in a shallow dish of water on a sunny window sill. These have grown for about a week.
Embellishments
The stone in front of the grave can be a home made cookie or a store bought cookie--just make sure it is big enough to cover the hole. It is easiest for me to use a little of the cake batter in an egg ring (sold at 100 yen stores). That way I don’t have to make cookies in addition to the cake. Put oil on the ring and the tinfoil, then fill two thirds full with the batter.
Grass/ dirt: color coconut green with food coloring for grass, or use cornflakes or riceflakes for dirt. Crushed Oreo cookies or sugar cookies also make good dirt (used for the path in photo above.
Flowers: any small colorful candy will look like flowers, or make them out of fondant.
Bushes: I cut a slit in flat green gummy hearts, then slid together on the slits.
Grave cloth: make this out of fondant, or cut a marshmallow in a spiral and squeeze flat with your fingers, or simply use a real piece of cloth.
Rocks: chocolate rocks can be found in many places--the ones sold at 100 yen stores don’t look very realistic, but maybe that is just as well--I used very realistic looking ones, and someone threw them out rather than eating them!!
Where to find it in Japan
The row of packets on the top row are only sold around Valentine’s Day, so be sure to shop ahead. Many grocery stores sell the cotton candy and chocolate rocks year round. Fondant (shown in photo below,) is sold in many grocery stores (Seiyu,) but do not include the cutters which are sold at 100 yen stores.
The easiest way to make trees is to use “real” ones--parsley, celery, rosemary, and mint all make good “trees.” The cloth is made of fondant, so it is edible, too, but you could use a strip of real cloth, if you prefer--just don’t eat it! If you want to serve it for breakfast, use a coffee cake recipe--our favorite is carrot cake--that way, you get your vegetables, too!
This is a no-bake version made with cereal. Melt marshmallows and butter, then stir in any kind of unsweetened cereal. To form the empty grave, lay a mug on it’s side, and press the warm mixture over the top. Form a handful into a disc for the grave stone. The crosses are made with chocolate filled cookie sticks (Toppo sold in Japan) but they could be made with pretzel sticks, bread sticks, or chocolate. I tie the cross pieces on with thread, but you can fasten it on with icing instead--just lay them flat until the icing hardens. I used chocolate rocks to mark a path to the empty grave, but it did not show up very well in the photo, so I sprinkled cocoa powder on the path and the stone that was rolled away.
Three ways to make edible Crosses
!. Make 3 crosses out of pretzels, or Pokky sticks. These are cookie sticks covered in chocolate. In the U.S., many Walmarts carry them in their foreign foods, or asian food sections. Many asian markets sell them as well. If you can’t find anything edible, make them out of clean dowels or plastic straws.
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2.Sometimes stores that sell chocolate eggs and Easter bunnies sell chocolate crosses as well. These are trickier to fasten on, since you can’t poke them into the cake the way you can pretzels or dowels. You can make your own chocolate crosses by buying plastic molds, melt your own chocolate and fill the molds. If you make your own chocolate crosses, you can stick 2 lollipop sticks or skewers into the bottom of each cross. Then you have something to poke into the cake to keep the crosses upright. You can order cross molds from Sugarcraft, and other websites or craft stores.
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3.Melt chocolate, spread the chocolate in a small tinfoil lined pan. Wait until the chocolate has partially hardened, then cut out cross shapes. Allow the chocolate to completely harden, then lift the foil out of the pan and break away the excess chocolate.