The Easter lamb cake is a longtime tradition. It’s the stuff that special memories are made from! All you need is the lamb mold and a dense cake batter that will hold up well in the mold after baking. See our lamb cake recipe!
For a dense cake, you could use a pound cake mix or use a simple yellow cake mix, sour cream and pudding mix, which is what we did here since yellow cake mix is easier to find.
You can easily find lamb cake molds online. Nordic Ware is a good brand. Just Google around! Depending on your mold, this recipe will probably make leftovers, so have some cupcake pans or a couple small loaf pans ready. (It’s better to have too much batter than to end up with only half a lamb!) Make sure to grease and flour the mold really well so that the cake does not stick.
For presentation, set the lamb cake in Easter grass with jelly beans! You can also make your own edible Easter grass! Just mix 2 cups of the shredded coconut with 8 drops of green food coloring and a teaspoon of water. Spread the colored coconut out on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Allow to air dry several hours or overnight.
Cake
The Old Farmer's Almanac Editors
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The Easter Lamb cake brings back many happy memories. My Grandmother made it every year for Easter. From the first year she made it, we grandkids (10 of us) would fight over who got to eat the head. A few years later as the family grew, she would make it for Christmas as well. It represented the Lamb of God.
Grandmother iced the lamb with a cooked icing recipe. She reserved a bit back and colored it pink for the inside ears and nose then used raisins for the eyes.
I was elated that the cake pan was one of the things she left me after she died. I treasure it dearly for the memories it brings back. I still use it at Easter when I host Easter Dinner.
Tip from Grandmother - Use a bamboo skewer to run down the head through the neck and into the body to help hold the head in place. She placed a bow on the tip of the skewer to pull it out before cutting.
Tip for unused cake batter - Grandmother made her cake from scratch and made a batch and a half of batter. The batter that was not used for the lamb cake was put in a small pan and baked. She used an egg-shaped cookie cutter to make decorated Easter eggs for those of us who did not get the lamb head. At Christmas she cut them into squares and decorated them as presents. She used a chocolate mold to make bows for the presents.
I hope the Lamb cake brings new memories to all those who make it.
