Festive 1950s-style Easter cakes with jelly beans & coconut

1950s-style Easter cake recipes with jelly beans and coconut

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Easter cakes like these bring together all the things people used to love seeing on a holiday table: soft layers, a little citrus, and a pile of coconut on top. Jelly beans tucked into a tinted coconut “nest” give it that playful spring look, while the cake itself is tender and full of flavor.

These recipes are from a time when cakes were homemade more often than not, and bakers made them look festive with simple touches. One version keeps things classic with vanilla and a fluffy egg-white frosting, while the other brings in lemon flavor and buttermilk for a richer texture. Whether you lean toward the Easter Glory cake or the triple-layer version, each recipe delivers a colorful dessert that looks perfect at the center of a holiday table.

Easter Glory cake recipe

Just as pumpkin pie means Thanksgiving, and plum pudding means “Merry Christmas” — so this luscious gold and white beauty says, “Let’s have a happy Easter!”

Heaped high with the fresh, fresh whiteness of tender-moist Baker’s Coconut, this irresistible cake is already an Easter tradition. And no wonder — for under its luscious topping is the lightest, tenderest cake, made with superfine Swans Down Cake Flour. 

Easter glory cake recipe

Easter glory cake recipe

Easter Glory Cake

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Additional Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes

Ingredients

  • 2-1/2 cups sifted Swans Down Cake Flour
  • 3 teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1-1/2 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup shortening (room temperature)
  • Milk (With butter, margarine, or lard, use 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons milk. With vegetable or any other shortening, use 1 cup milk.)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 eggs, unbeaten

Instructions

    Combine sifted flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in Sifter. Cream shortening, sift in dry ingredients, add 3/4 cup of the milk and the vanilla. Mix until all flour is dampened. Then beat 2 minutes. Add eggs and remaining milk; beat 1 minute longer. (Mix vigorously by hand or at a low speed of electric mixer. Count only actual beating time. Scrape bowl and spoon or beater often.)

    Pour batter into two round 9-inch layer pans, which have been lined on bottoms with paper. Bake in moderate oven (375 F) 25 minutes, or until done. Cool, then frost. (Frosting recipe below.)

    Easter Glory frosting recipe

    Combine 2 egg whites, 1-1/2 cups sugar, dash of salt, 1/3 cup water, and 2 teaspoons light corn syrup. Beat until thoroughly mixed. Cook over rapidly boiling water, beating with rotary beater or electric beater 7 minutes, or to stiff peaks.

    Remove from heat, add 1 teaspoon vanilla, and beat 1 minute longer. Spread between layers and over cake. Then sprinkle with 1-1/2 cups Baker's Coconut. Decorate with jelly beans.

Easter glory cake recipe

ALSO SEE: Get more recipes for old-fashioned 7-minute frosting here


Vintage Easter cake: Greetings through the oven door (1958)

Sure, quick and easy with Ceresota flour

That clever old Easter bunny (and his helpers) never turned out a nicer surprise! A cake that looks like Easter and tastes like it looks. Superbly moist and tender. Rich in good flavor. And so easy to bake.

Easter Cake recipe

Makes 3 (9″) layers

3 3/4 cups sifted Ceresota Unbleached Flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup soft shortening (part butter or margarine if desired)
1 1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp lemon flavor
1 1/4 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
2 cups buttermilk

Cut three 9″ circles of wax paper to fit layer cake pans; grease pans, line bottoms of pans with wax paper, then grease and flour paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (moderate).

Sift together flour, baking powder, soda and salt. Cream shortening, add sugar; cream until light and fluffy. Add flavoring, blend well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Beat smooth after each addition. Divide batter into cake pans. Bake 30-35 minutes, or until cake tests done. Cool. When completely cool, frost.

Vintage Easter cake - Greetings through the oven door (1958)

Frosting

4 1/2 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar
6 tbsp soft butter or margarine
3 tbsp milk or cream, enough to moisten
1 1/2 tsp lemon extract
2 egg whites

Beat together the confectioner’s sugar, butter, milk or cream, and lemon extract until smooth. Add the egg whites and beat until light. Frost layers and sides of cake.

Decoration

2 boxes (4 oz) Shredded Coconut
Yellow or Green liquid coloring
Jelly beans

Sprinkle 1 box of coconut all over top and sides. Tint remaining box of coconut with yellow or green coloring. Use colored coconut to make a nest in the center of cake. Fill nest with various colored jelly beans.

ALSO SEE
Brach's Easter candy from the '60s: Bunnies, chicks, chocolate eggs & more

Easter Glory cake recipe

Economy cake goes Easter-elegant with baker’s coconut! (See other Easter Glory cake recipe above.)

Easter Glory cake with jelly beans & coconut (1950)

ALSO SEE
Cute vintage Easter cakes from the '50s & '60s

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