Beware the Pizza Bunny

Today's recipe is a bit of a cheat because the book is slightly past my usual cutoff date of 1979, but I thought it was worth bending the rules.

Pizza Bunny is from The Children's Cookbook: A Beginner's Guide to Cooking (Favorite Recipes Press, 1980):

"It's kind of odd to make a pizza crust out of rice, eggs, and cheese," you might say to yourself, "but the rest looks pretty normal. It's just topped with the usual pizza toppings. What makes this recipe so special?"

Maybe you'll get to "The Final Touch" and say, "Yeah, I guess a basket full of parsley and candy eggs is pretty weird too. I suppose I'll give Poppy a pass."

The truth is, I didn't pick this one because of the recipe or even because of the odd notion of what constitutes an appropriate garnish. No. I picked this because it is accompanied by the creepiest damn picture I have ever seen of a bunny-shaped foodstuff.

Prepare yourself for the horror that is Pizza Bunny:

The vacant olive eyes! The too-jaunty parsley whiskers and pimento belt! The pizza sauce that makes it look as if the bunny may have been secretly eviscerated, then hurriedly covered in mozzarella "fur" in a botched taxidermy job. (That would also explain the dead, dead eyes...)

This is the cookbook to give your kids if you want them to stay out of the kitchen forever.

Here's hoping that if the Easter bunny visits you this weekend, he's not nearly as horrifying!