How to remove empty entries of an array recursively?

I need to remove empty entries on multilevel arrays. For now I can remove entries with empty sub-arrays, but not empty arrays... confused, so do I... I think the code will help to explain better.

/**
 * 
 * This function remove empty entries on arrays
 * @param array $array
 */
function removeEmptysFromArray($array) {
    
    $filtered = array_filter($array, 'removeEmptyItems');
    return $filtered;
}

/**
 * 
 * This is a Callback function to use in array_filter()
 * @param array $item
 */
function removeEmptyItems($item) {
    
    if (is_array($item)) {
        return array_filter($item, 'removeEmptyItems');
    }
 
    if (!empty($item)) {
        return true;  
    }
}


$raw = array(
    'firstname' => 'Foo',
    'lastname'  => 'Bar',
    'nickname' => '',
    'birthdate' => array( 
        'day'   => '',
        'month' => '',
        'year'  => '',
    ),
    'likes' => array(
        'cars'  => array('Subaru Impreza WRX STi', 'Mitsubishi Evo', 'Nissan GTR'),
        'bikes' => array(),
    ),
);

print_r(removeEmptysFromArray($raw));

This code will remove nickname, birthdate but is not removing bikes that have an empty array.

My question is... How to remove the bikes entry?