Lamb Cake

I had never in my life had a lamb cake. They are readily found in bakeries all across our Midwest region but I had never actually tried one.

This past year Nick found a lamb cake pan and requested one. He remembers his aunt making one every Easter when they would visit her house for the holiday in Chicago. So last year Emma and I gave it a go.

Interestingly enough, when I researched these fun cakes I found that they originated in Germany, although it is also mentioned that they are from Austria, Poland, and the Northern Region of France. So we’ll say this originated in Europe ;). These cakes have always been made in a two sided cake pan. While they now are known to have frosting on them they originally had powdered sugar with a red bow tied around the neck. Immigrants from Germany brought these pans and the tradition to America.

Our lamb cake pan did not have instructions so I looked them up. Thank you Google! Interestingly I found that it is not tradition to pour batter into the two halves and glue them together with icing but rather to fill one side fully, placing the empty side on top and letting the cake rise into that.

Who ever would have known?

And how did our lamb came go you may ask? Well friend, follow along…

But here’s how else it went…

One thing I read was to generously grease and flour the pans. I had read that the flour was very necessary. So we did that. Make sure to flour all the way up to the lip of the pan. We used avocado oil in a spray can (from Costco) and that did really nice.

I’m going to tell ya, I straight up cheated and used a box cake mix. It was fine for us. If this had been the star of the show I probably would have gone homemade all the way. But this was our first run and I knew there were 3 other desserts coming…so box cake all the way! Another tip just so ya know, is I buy a lot of cake mixes at Big Lots. They have a lot of the seasonal ones that can be hard to find at other places.

Once I got the cake into the pan and after I put the lid on, I made sure to poke some toothpicks into the little ears. These served to make sure the ears didn’t fall off and it worked! The ears stuck on tight to the head!

Make sure you put it on a cookie sheet. You are filling one half full to the top for goodness sakes and counting on the rising to fill the other half so of course there is going to be plenty oozing out of the pan.

After the cake was done baking (we baked ours for 35 minutes at 350) I let it cool until I could handle the cake without pot holders.

To my shock and the glory of God the top pan came right off! Hallelujah.

Then came the next part!!!

To which the poor little guy’s head came clean off. But by golly did those ears stay on the head!

Thank you toothpicks!

I was a bit dismayed but there isn’t much that frosting can’t fix.

Perhaps I should get a tattoo saying that?

So we got to work frosting with canned frosting. We hardly ever use canned frosting but I knew that easter weekend we would be stretched thin for time (hello putting together easter baskets!) so it was a perfect solution for us. I put the frosting in a disposable piping bag and used a medium sized star tip.

The head went back on easy as pie (or cake!) with the frosting but there was one problem…I didn’t have a pan with a lid tall enough to transport the lamb cake to our easter celebrations.

So lamby went back down on it’s side and it was a laying down cake.

I think it was cute for our first time attempt and am happy that I can say I’ve finally had a lamb cake!

Have you ever tried a lamb cake or made one yourself? We’d love to hear about your experience, friend.