This is the 2007 Easter lamb cake. It's not a pretty sight ...and I can't recall ever labeling any of our cakes as....pretty. Which is why every year....the entire family begs my husband to make the lamb cake...and why every year he swears he won't make one....since it will be subject to ridicule.
The lamb cake tradition started after college. I was living in Seattle....a hip...gray city populated by Californians and Swedes. Although I was happy to be finally living on my own...I missed the food and the
elaborate traditions of my Chicago Eastern European background at holiday time.
This was especially true at Easter time...in my old neighborhood...this was a 5 day celebration...Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter, and
Dyngus Day.
Easter Sunday was a wonderful day....we finally turned away from long sad religious ceremonies and started the day with a mass full of beautiful music. The altar of the church was surrounded by hundreds of white lilies. I always wore a pretty flouncy dress with slippery new shoes and the Easter bunny always left his basket on my bed while I was at church.
We had a huge family brunch of traditional food after mass --kielbasa, eggs, bread, hot cross buns, ham,
sauerkraut.....and a store bought lamb cake. My grandmother also served
Maneschewitz wine. I don't know why kosher wine was part of our Easter breakfast but I remember being served a thimble full of the sweet dark wine each year.
In Seattle...I could round up eggs and ham...even some hot cross buns.....but a lamb cake? No one heard of anything so odd on the west coast. One day in a mall, I walked into a kitchen store and saw a two piece cast iron mold of a lamb. I yelped with glee.....finally I could have a lamb cake on Easter!
Trouble is....I don't bake....and was clueless about using a baking mold. But my boyfriend, (who became future hub), came from a line of clever German cooks and offered to make the cake....and that's how the
tradition started.
I don't remember what happened the first year he baked the cake....but I can tell you ...everything that could possibly go wrong with a lamb cake has happened since then.
One year...an ear fell off, another year a nose rolled away, some years the cake didn't fit together, there were years when mysterious gouges, gaps and uneven bodies emerged from the mold along with unsightly bulges...the most common malady is a broken neck. Our lamb cakes often lose their heads during the frosting process.
This year the head fell off...again... ....causing a blunt nose injury and requiring a kabob stick through the neck to keep the head attached. Hub also decided to try making a lemon pound cake from scratch....giving the lamb a rather unique jaundiced undercoating.
It was not a pretty sight.....and in a few minutes I'll email my daughter (who's at college) some pictures and tell her the state of the lamb cake....
"Look hon, look how bad the cake turned out this year."
And I know she'll look at the pictures and laugh....because an ugly lamb cake...makes everyone happy.
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