Welcome to Day 2 of The Eight Days of Lamb Cakes! Today we have a great cake that was sent to me by Martha K.
Martha writes:
Dear Ruth, I decided today to look in my box of Mama’s recipes and I discovered that she too had been on a quest for the perfect Lamb Cake Recipe.I mean it is the “Mother Lode” of Lamb cake recipes.
I Also have a Lamb Cake Mold that my mother had, probably from the 1940′s. I think there is also a Santa mold and maybe a big egg mold. I have the original “Renalde”(that is the manufacturer name of the mold)Lamb Cake Recipe and Renalde Lamb Cake Frosting Recipe.
Best wishes, Martha K.
I have to confess, it really WAS the mother lode of recipe! I got some great stuff from Martha K. (Thanks so much, Martha!) but I was very excited to try out the Renalde Lamb Cake Recipe.
This one was a little bit more time consuming that Trish’s Lamb Cake because it required the addition of beaten egg whites, but it was early in my lamb cake making, and I was still up for challenges.
The batter turned out nice and light. I was pleased with the texture and, true to the recipe, it made enough extra for 6 cupcakes.
I have to confess that this was a great batter. It literally popped out of the lamb pan after it was baked. It was sturdy but not crumbly, and didn’t stick at all.
The Renalde Lamb Cake Frosting was another matter entirely. It was really disgusting. And it was totally my fault. The recipe calls for raw egg whites, but like I am going to frost a cake with raw egg whites. So, I substituted pasteurized egg whites from a carton. Sometimes in vintage cooking I can get away with those, like in the Vintage Bakery Frosting, but in this case it was not going to happen. The “frosting” curdled and slid off the lamb almost as soon as I got it on. As I was frantically sticking coconut onto the sliding frosting, for once I was thankful I don’t make videos of the Mid-Century Menu. Because a video of that it would have been ridiculous.
Testing lamb cake around here is a serious, serious business.
From the lamb testing notes:
Very good. Good cake texture. Springy, good flavor. Surprisingly good with coconut.
From the frosting notes:
Terrible.
The Verdict: This was by far my favorite lamb cake, and the one I thought most resembled my grandmother’s recipe. Tom liked this one a lot, too. I would definitely recommend it highly for your Easter Lamb Cake! Don’t bother with the “frosting” unless you have access to pasteurized eggs in the shell. Use a better frosting, like the Vintage Bakery Frosting from the first post.
The recipe that came with the original Renalde lamb cake mold. This makes a springy, sturdy cake with a good texture and flavor that unmolds well. A classic, and the closest recipe I've found to my grandmother's lamb cake.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 4 eggs, seperated
- 1 cup whole milk
- 3 cups sifted cake flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla
Instructions
- Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating thoroughly after each one is added.
- Sift dry ingredients together 3 times and add to creamed mixture alternately with milk and vanilla, beating until smooth after each addition.
- Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites.
- Grease cake mold thoroughly; fill face part of mold with batter. Cover with other half of mold and place in hot oven face down, baking for 45 mins. Bake at 450 degrees for first 15 mins, finish baking at 350 degrees.
- Remove from oven and let cool for 15 mins before loosening to take out.
Notes
This recipe yields enough batter to fill one vintage lamb pan and also make 6 cupcakes.
Small Disclaimer:
As with everything we make on the Menu, The Eight Days of Lamb cakes contain recipes for lamb cakes that turned out along with the ones that didn’t turn out so well. Please read each description carefully before choosing your recipe. The recipes we tested were not altered by us in any way, and were prepared according the the directions provided with no substitutions so we could judge each recipe fairly on its own merit.
If you have never made a lamb cake before, please see my tips on making a vintage lamb cake before you attempt one of these recipes. Also, these recipes are scaled to fit a vintage lamb cake pan. Modern lamb cake pans are much larger, and more cake batter will be needed.
No matter what, they’re always SO cute though!
Ooohhhhh, this one looks like a real winner!!! I might just have to get a pan now!
I have always found this to be such a neat topic. Reminds me a little of those Coconut cut up cakes from back in the day. I wonder if it was a regional type dessert? I live in the south (New Orleans) and neither myself or mother have ever seen that type of cake. Always enjoy your posts!
OOPS! ps I wanted to add, here is a link to all recipes with 13 pictures. Number #12 I believe looks like a startled Persian cat.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/easter-lamb-cake-ii/
Mary – I think it might have been regional! I could see the lambie cake being a Mid-Western thing.
Oh, and thanks for the link!
This is interesting. However, I wanted to let you know that the link to the frosting recipe leads to your draft page and will not allow us to peek. 04/02/12 @ 1:00 PM
I am VERY interested in that recipe for frosting for I have been on a quest for a good cake frosting for a long time.
I can’t wait to see the rest of the little lambs.
Oops, thanks LorieB!!! All fixed!
Love you, love your website, but it kinda looks like a “Silence of the Lambs” Easter cake…
I know, right??? That frosting made it look so creepy…
Dear Ruth, I’m so glad the Renalde cake turned out so well. (If NOT the frosting.)
Now I have a very serious question for the taste tester:
If one made the Renalde cake with the Vintage Bakery Frosting, could one put the coconut? (I mean taste-wise would it be too much?)
Best Wishes, Martha K.
I had a Renalde cupcake with Vintage Bakery Frosting and coconut and I thought it was really good, so go for it!!
PS I’m eagerly awaiting DAY 3! I may end up making a whole flock of lambies. We can have a kind of Lambie Cake buffet insead of a regular Easter dinner….hmmm?
Go for it! You could totally do it with your HUGE stash of vintage lambie recipes.
My question is this: Did you use butter or shortening? It says butter in the list but it says to cream shortening. Thank you.
Hi Lou Ann! I used unsalted butter. There was a typo in the recipe.
I live in England and until this particular moment in time I never knew lamb cakes existed. My life is irrevocably altered. Roll on Easter.
I am trying this cake recipe with the Miracle Frosting. Don’t know what I did wrong (or right), but I got 3 cakes and 7 cupcakes out of one batch!
Whoa! Bonus!!
Fabulous recipe! My cake turned out exactly as described and pictured! Only thing is that it made one cake and like 2 dozen cupcakes, so then I was worried that maybe my pan was smaller than your pan and didn’t know if I should bake it as long. I baked it for 45 minutes per the directions and it was fine…just the amount of left over batter was confusing!
Thank you for posting this recipe, it was so amazingly buttery! And it held up perfectly in the 3D mold. My grandmother used to bake a traditional pound cake in lamb mold, and it never had flavor or crumb like this recipe does. Perfect. I’m so glad I came across it!