How is everyone doing trapped inside?  Good?  Okay? Tired of your own cooking? Feeling guilty because heroic health care workers are struggling while you are sitting around in your PJ pants eating your twelfth cookie? Yeah, me too. So I made Tom and Alex make this lamb…bread.

This is the Banana Bread Lamb. *cough*

He looks…fine. He looks fine. Fine!

And before we talk about how fine this is, let’s all look at this adorable picture of Alex in her beloved lamb cake apron from the swag shop.

This past week I’ve been a little under the weather, from a cold that is NOT Covid-19, so Alex and Tom offered to make the lamb cake for this year. (Don’t forget to submit your lamb for this year’s contest!) They used our current favorite banana bread recipe, the recipe from How America Eats by Clementine Paddleford, with the addition of 1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring and 1/2 cup of chocolate chips.

The recipe normally yields a 9-inch loaf pan of bread. I wasn’t sure how much quick bread batter the lamb pan would hold, so I had them double the recipe. The entire doubled recipe did not fit in the pan. It held about two-thirds of the batter, so if you want to replicate this exactly using this recipe, you can go either way. You can just make the recipe as a single loaf and have a skinny lamb or you can double it and make some banana muffins with the extra.  I am pretty certain most banana bread recipes will work for this, so feel free to use your go-to recipe or a recipe you feel comfortable with.

Side note: Alex did a lot of the measuring for this and did a great job. I was very proud. Tom prepped the pan, and I was less proud.

“Are you just…using your fingers to grease that!?!”

“Get out of here, aren’t you supposed to be resting?”

“Touché”

Sigh. Here is the tutorial, if you need to see the whole pan prep process.

But the lamb came out of the pan just fine, a lot better than I thought it would. I thought banana bread would be too sticky for the pan, but it actually worked. The face did stick a bit because we added chocolate chips to the batter, which gave us some instability when they all sunk to the bottom. If you leave out the chips or use mini chips, it should be fine. But if you follow the cooling process when you remove the mold, it should all turn out well.

Then we went straight to the frosting. I wanted something that would be easy for them to do, but still delicious. I decided on a fudge icing that they could pour on.

[cooked-sharing]

I think we waited too long to pour it over and the frosting was already too thick. I had to come into the kitchen to consult because the lamb couldn’t balance on the cooling rack. We had to stick some toothpicks in the bottom of the lamb to get it to sit up on the cooling rack, and by the time it was secured and they were ready to pour, it was pretty thick.

I tried spreading it a bit, and it just did not like the spreading. So if you make this, just pour it and be done.

Despite a less than stellar look, the icing was delicious.

I flirted with the idea of trying to remake this so that it would be more photogenic, but forget it. We are out of frozen bananas and I’m already in my PJ pants. Do-overs are for people who aren’t sheltering in place.

“Oh no, Internet! I made a lamb cake and didn’t do a perfect job. Now you shall all mock me.”

“Are you making fun of my fear of people mocking me by mocking me?”

“Nooooooo….I’m just going to taste this now.”

“It’s delicious.”

The Verdict: Banana Bread Dipped In Chocolate

From The Tasting Notes –

He was right. It was really good. And it worked in the lamb pan, rather well, so I was satisfied. Yes, you can make quick breads in the lamb pan. And yes, they will depan and sit up. And if you bake the toothpicks into them according to the tutorial, the head will not fall off. Appearance aside, it was a delicious lamb and the chocolate icing tasted like really, really good donut icing. Overall a success, and hopefully one that you guys can replicate!

Head!

Stay tuned for more lamb mold shenanigans. Alex and I are going to try a gelatin next.  And don’t forget to take pictures of your lamb-whatever for the lamb cake contest!!!