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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Testing lamb cake around here is a serious, serious business.

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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.

Vintage Birthday Cake Frosting

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup shortening
  • 1 lb powdered sugar
  • 2 pasteurized egg whites (I use egg whites from the carton, measured to equal 2 egg whites)
  • 2 T cake flour
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 3 T milk
  • Cream shortening and sugar well.
  • Add egg whites and blend well.
  • Add flour, vanilla and 1 T milk at a time until right consistency to spread.
  • Will frost a three-layer cake.

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.

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