polish easter

A sturdy pound cake baked in a lamb shaped mold, a delicious centerpiece for Easter

No-fail Easter Lamb Cake

butter, softened

sugar

eggs

flour

salt

baking powder

baking soda

buttermilk (or 1 teaspoon vinegar and enough milk to make 1/2 cup)

vanilla

butter and breadcrumbs

butter

milk & more for glaze

jelly beans

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time

Combine dry ingredients and add to batter alternating with buttermilk and vanilla

Prepare pans by spreading lightly with butter and dusting with dried breadcrumbs

Pour batter into the bottom of your two cake pans, assemble according to direction on your lamb cake mold

Cool the cake for 10 minutes, remove from pan

Mix butter, shortening, powdered sugar, vanilla, and just 3 tablespoons of milk, gradually adding more milk until the consistency is similar to light and fluffy mashed potatoes, it should be stiff enough to hold its shape when you pipe it, but soft enough to pipe easily

Place about 1/2 cup in a small deep bowl and blend in enough milk to make a thick glaze, the texture should be thicker than heavy cream, kind of like a thin pancake batter

Dip the lambs face into the glaze, covering the face and front side of the ears, and allow the glaze to drip off (I occasionally gave it a wipe to help the process)

Add a small amount of frosting to the center of your serving platter, place the lamb on top, this will kind of glue it to the plate, I do this with all cakes, but it&#8217;s especially helpful with this top-heavy cake

Add a star tip to a piping bag and pipe swirls of frosting onto the lamb&#8217;s body

If desired, use food coloring to tint a small amount of the frosting, literally a tablespoon or two, a light pink or peach color, use this to pipe the inside of the ears and nose

Add jelly beans for eyes, I used a plastic straw and pushed it into the cake where I wanted the eyes to be, it gave me an opening to push the jelly beans into

Refrigerate until you&#8217;re ready to put it on the table

Cons: I have a vintage Wilton lamb cake pan, and this recipe at regular size (1x) didn't quite fill the bottom half of the pan, so I wondered if it would actually rise enough to fill out the other pan. I decided to give it a try, but unfortunately it did not. It rose enough that the lamb stands up ok, but it is not as thick and it doesn't have any of the contours that it should on its back. I think that 2x would be too much.
Pros: It came out of the pan well and seems like a good density, so I know it will hold up. It's not Easter yet so I can't say anything about the taste yet!

It came out of the pan easily!! I used homemade bread crumbs.

I have a vintage (1974) Wilton 3D bunny mold that was my mom's and I had never used.  I made my normal dense cake recipe that I have used hundreds of times for Wilton shaped pans and baked it at 350 for 45 minutes and it came crashing down.  It didn't fully cook on the inside.  I have never had this happen.  So I stumbled across this recipe and thought I would try again. I liked that it was a lower temperature for a longer time which made me think that this had to work.  I didn't think that the rabbit could be much different than the lamb, but when I was pouring in the batter I noticed that it didn't seem to be enough batter.  I put it in the pan, put the lid on, and hoped for the best.  Well, when it came out, it was flat and had not taken shape of the top pan.  After letting it cool, I set it up and its head fell off.  There was just not enough of a base of cake to hold up the ears.  It is at least cooked all the way through, but the bunny is lying down now instead of sitting up.  I'm going to have to experiment again and make more batter.

My lamb ended up being flat on oneside and the neck and head fell off. There definitely wasn't enough batter

I had no directions with my cake pans so I filled each half and baked for 30 minutes. I "glued" them together with frosting and placed in freezer for an hour before frosting the whole lamb.
I will try it again. I will be careful to grease pans heavily. The halves were tricky to get out. It has to be a stressful time getting a whole lamb out of the pans.

Like someone else I hit the "2X" button to increase the font size...what a lot of batter! Anyway I made it fit, baked as directed, unmolded it successfully, left for an hour and the thing had collapsed inward. Was raw in the middle. SO... I guess I had too much batter for the time allotted. There was no way to run a tester into the cake to catch this. I am pretty disappointed and am scrapping plans to make another. At least til next year. Then I will look up the recipe that came with the mold. 
Thanks anyways.

This will be my permanent go to lamb recipe. I always had problems with the cake sticking in the mold, no matter how well I prepped it. The butter/bread crumb trick is like magic. No sticking anywhere. Also this is the perfect amount of batter to fill the entire mold front and back when fully baked. I like the lower temperature, longer bake time compared to past recipes. I am so glad I ran across this recipe.

Just made my Baranek yesterday. Thank you so much for the perfect instructions. I’m just hoping the middle was done. Toothpick came out clean but the middle of the body sunk in.  I also forgot to pipe the icing on the back and top of the head, but everyone says it looks great. Can’t wait for us to dig in on Easter Sunday. Now can you suggest a recipe for meat pierogi. Had sone delicious ones in Krakow but can’t seem to find a recipe to match them or the ones my Aunt made. Thanks.

Tried this in my Wilton aluminum lamb mold. Came out of pan easily using butter and flour on pans, but I don’t think there was enough batter because the lamb started reclining towards the back ( nap time? :-)  I had to devise a “wedgie” to keep it upright! My eggs were large, all ingredients fresh. Any ideas why there didn’t seem to be enough batter?

Lovely recipe but just FYI if it helps someone - for a Wilton Stand-Up Lamb mold, you will need to double this recipe.  It perfectly creates the front half only if you only do it with the single recipe.  I also believe this would likely work best if you baked 2 halves separately and then paste together - not sure if doubling it would rise enough to fill the back while baking but I haven't tried it yet that way so I could be wrong!  We have a lovely skinny lamb for Easter this year so I'll try again next year - the funny part of doing recipes just once a year :)  Delicious and just my learning curve on the amounts.

Came out of the pan wonderfully, although it wasn't nearly enough bstter - could have left the back off and it would have been fine because it just barely made it to the top of the face side once baked. Probably should have read the comments first. I opted for dusting with powdered sugar, and used Royal Icing discs leftover from a recent cookie decorating project for the eyes and used a black food color marker for the center of the eyes. Since I seem to always have royal icing made up, I threw some of that undiluted into a zip bag and drew the mouth and nose. Will definitely take another shot at it next year and double the recipe.  Thanks for the great tips.

I have made lamb cakes for years. This is the first I have made from scratch, and it was delicious. This pound cake would have been great without any frosting. It is substantial enough to make it easier for the lamb to be supported.
However, the recipe was not enough for my lamb mold. After making it, it did not fill the lamb, and I made an additional half recipe. Even that wasn't enough, but it did work.

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No-fail Easter Lamb Cake

Top 1 polish easter recipes from across the web

The most viewed polish easter recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 20,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engineic_arrow_forward_48px

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No-fail Easter Lamb Cake

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