Eastertime 2025 Lamb Cake

Lamb cake.

Today I decided to making a cake in my Wilton 3D Lamb cake pan. I think the Lamb Centerpiece Cake is so cute and had been wanting to make and decorate one since I got my pan in 2020.  But, five years later, I'd yet to do so. The reason is that we always go to Grandpa's house for Easter, and I've been afraid to take a 3D cake on a 2.5 hour car ride. We're going again this year, but I decided to make the cake anyway. If it looked stable enough for the trip, I could make it again for Easter weekend. If not, at least I'd have broken in my lamb pan.

Wilton lamb cake pan.

I looked high and low for a recipe because I wanted to make it a coconut cake. I finally settled on this recipe from Southern Living. Here it is written out:

Ingredients:

2 cups All Purpose Flour

1.5 tsp Baking Powder

3/4 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 cup Butter, softened

1 cup Sugar

2 large Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

1/2 tsp Almond Extract

1 cup Buttermilk

Directions:

• Oil and flour the cake mold. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
• Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl.
• Beat butter and sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
• With the mixer on medium-low speed, add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in extracts. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture (batter will be thick).
• Arrange the face side of the mold on a sheet pan and fill with batter; make sure to fill all crevices, especially ear crevices, evenly and level batter with a spatula. Fit the other side of the mold on top, ensuring it is closed. Tie with baker's twine, place on cookie sheet.
• Bake at 350°F until a toothpick inserted into the steam hole comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes.
• Transfer the mold to a wire rack and cool for 10 minutes. Lift off the top part of the mold (with the steam hole).
• Cool for an additional 5 minutes, then carefully invert the cake out of the other half of the mold. Cool cake completely, face side up. Do not stand the cake upright until completely cooled.

I made these changes: I used a very scant cup of sugar (185g instead of 200), added 1 tsp of coconut extract and 80g of sweetened, shredded coconut to the batter. 

The directions that come with the pan say to use shortening and flour the pan well.  But the recipe directions say to use vegetable oil.  I do have shortening, but all I use it for is fondant work so it's a bit old and I was worried it might be rancid. So I brushed the pan well with avocado oil, floured it, and hoped for the best. 

The batter, even with the addition of the coconut, did not come all the way up to the rim of the pan. 

The batter was not enough 

to reach the rim of the pan.

I did my best to tie the filled mold with baker's twine. 

Tied up with twine and on the half sheet.

The cake bakes face (front side) down to make sure the head of the lamb is filled. No cake seeped out during baking, and the cake was done in 45 minutes and maybe even sooner, had I tested it.

After cooling for 10 minutes I had no problem taking off the bottom half of the pan. About 7 minutes later I unmolded the cake and that was a bit of a disaster. The cake did not slide out of the pan, I had to pry it loose with my hands and a part of the cake broke off. Probably a combination of the additional 7 minutes (should be 5 but there were people in the kitchen so by the time I found another spot to unmold it there was a delay), and the fact that it's that front pan that gets filled with batter, these things made it stick.

A fairly big piece broke off during unmolding.

The broken spot would further destabilize the cake.

Were I frosting the cake it would likely be no problem because the piece that broke off could be "glued" back with frosting. But as I look at the base of this cake, I see how narrow it is. Especially with this recipe that didn't make enough batter to go up the rim of the pan, so the base of the back of the lamb was not filled out. I don't think the cake would stay upright on that long car ride to Grandpa's house.  

I ended up putting the cake on a nice Easter platter, dusting it with confectioner's sugar, and tying a little bow around the lamb's neck. Mr. Lamb looked very handsome posing for his picture!  We had the cake for dessert and it was very tasty  BUT if using this recipe again I'd make the following adjustments:

1. Use 1 tsp of salt instead of 3/4

2. Check it at 40 minutes baking time because it was a bit dry

3. Use 2 tsp vanilla instead of 1 tsp.

4. Use the full cup of sugar instead of the scant cup I used.

5. Use 75g shredded coconut instead of 80g.

6. Secure the lamb's head to the body using toothpicks. The head was pretty shaky with this recipe.

7. And most of all: use shortening instead of avocado oil to grease the pan, so the cake releases well.

That's quite a few tweaks! But they're not major ones and the cake was good. This cake was kind of fluffy and I'm not sure it's the perfect consistency for this pan which does, after all, call for pound cake.  But I think with the above tweaks, and if serving the cake at home, it would be just fine.

It was fun to make this lamb cake and I'm sorry I didn't get to decorate it with buttercream as I'd hoped. But I'm happy to have tried, and I'll certainly make another lamb when I get to host Easter.

I shared this cake on Instagram and an acquaintance who saw it sent me this picture of a Parisian patisserie, featuring very similar lamb cakes on top of their pastry case. I was so happy to see it! Maybe I didn't get to decorate it with buttercream flowers, but if it's good enough for a Parisian pastry shop, it's good enough for me!