You can use a cake mix, or try this classic recipe. Give the cakes time to cool, then pull one aside and cut it in half. Frost one half along the flat side, using vanilla frosting (store-bought or your favorite recipe, like this one).

Move the cake halves to whatever you’re serving this masterpiece on (a platter, Lazy Susan, old hubcap you found on the side of the road) and press them together, forming a semi-circle. Congratulations, you’ve made the bunny’s body!

Chop off the back end of the semi-circle. That little nubbin will become the tail of the bunny. Add some frosting to it and attach it to the opposite end of the bunny’s body (a.k.a. the end that’s still rounded).

This is what the tail looks like once it’s attached. It may not look like much just yet, but it will. Pinky promise.

Grab the second 9-inch chocolate cake and place a 1-cup measuring cup on top of it, near the edge. Use a knife to carve out a circle. You just made the rabbit’s head. Pretty easy, right?

Put a little vanilla frosting on the bottom of the bunny’s face and attach it to the flat end of the bunny body. Boom! Now you’ve got a … brown blob that looks vaguely like a slug. Or a lopsided attempt at a Princess Leia wig made out of cake. Stick with us.

You know that cake with a sad, measuring-cup-sized hole in it? It’s going to form the bunny’s legs and ears. First, the legs: Cut the edges of the cake off, just shy of either side of the hole.

Using that remaining block of cake, cut out an ear shape. You can use the one you just cut out as a stencil for the second ear—just stick the cut-out piece of cake on top of the remaining cake, and trace it with a knife. Done and done.

Using frosting as glue, spread a thin layer on the flat side of either semi-circle “leg,” and press it on either side of the bunny’s body. You may want to trim the legs a little, so they’re not as long as the rest of the rabbit.

See? It’s starting to look like … a second grader’s misguided attempt at a soapbox derby car? Hang in there.

Now that you have a rough—very rough—sense of the bunny’s shape, use a small knife to carve off the top half of the face, just to give it a little more dimension. (Plus, it makes the eyes stick easier.)

Then, cover that naked bunny in frosting.

Stick a skewer in the bunny’s head to support each ear. If you’re too freaked out to build your own ears—or you just realized you don’t have skewers or toothpicks handy—you could always make the ears out of paper. Some may say it’s a classier solution; we’re too committed to give up now. (Plus, more cake is more cake, right?)

Slowly slide each cake ear down the skewer. If it feels wobbly, try adding a second skewer. (And please, please, please remember to take those skewers out before serving. Nobody wants to remember your dessert as having a distinct crunch and woodsiness. Or go to the hospital afterward.)

Make it rain sweetened flaked coconut until that bunny is covered. You may have to gently pat it on the sides of the cake, just to get it to stick.

Pat the coconut gently around the ears and face; you don’t want those falling off when you’re this close to the big reveal.

The one perk to a terrifying bunny cake: People will have absolutely no problem tearing into it. Though it may haunt their dreams for weeks afterward.

How can you resist that little face?!

Pin this image so you can make this year after year (and maybe start a new family tradition: See just how absurd of a face you can give the bunny).