Easter Display Portrait, Somewhere, USA, 1975
This slide isn’t about that big, beautiful shocking pink bow on the fruit-filled Easter basket that has a thanksgiving horn of plenty attitude or the gray crushed velvet patterned Formica tabletop its sits on slightly off center. It’s not about how well Spanish gold curtains go with sage green walls, the pink cabinet in the kitchen or the polyester clad couple happily posing in the dining room corner.
This slide is about what’s appropriately up front and center. A white frosted cake baked in the shape of a little lamb. Those eyes, those ears and those noses. This is no ordinary little lamb cake. He has so much curiosity in his eyes. Does he realize he’s about to be desert? Would it be more painful to him, or less, if leg-of-lamb was served for Easter dinner?
I love little lamb cakes at Easter. Almost as much as I love bright dyed eggs and molded milk chocolate bunnies. But unlike the bunnies and eggs the little lamb cakes are nearly extinct. When was the last time you ate one? Where, oh where, have all the lamb cakes gone?
But, it’s not to late for them to be reintroduced on Easter dinner tabletops across America. You, yes, you can play your part in restoring this traditional Easter sweet treat by baking a lamb cake this year. The molds are easily available on online. If you are feeling extra ambitions perhaps you will finish your lamb cake with shredded coconut for that extra wooly look. If you like your lambs in color you can easily tint the cake, frosting and coconut with the food coloring of your choice. And last but not least if you are feeling a bit rebellious make a chocolate lamb cake and call it the baa baa black sheep lamb cake.
Here’s to the glory of Easter, making many lamb cakes and YOU!
HAPPY EASTER!
Charles Phoenix rules!
Took the LA tOUR LAST YEAR DURING THE nffc cONVENTION AND IT WAS JUST GREAT. iT WAS A TOTAL GREAT DAY. sAW AND LEARNED ALOTT.
I also have same situation at my childhood,
I like Lamb cake a lot, I like to study Spanish now,
Thanks,
Happy Easter.
I wonder if people still make lamb cakes for Easter. This is a nice pic.
I am going to go to Gloria’s Cake Supply House today and if I can find an Easter Lanb cake mold.
If I do I will certainly be adding shredded coconut for that extra wooly look.
Thanks for the memory and have a very hoppy Easter.
May Beauty,Love,Mercy and Magic abide in your heart.
Charles!
Your eyesight is failing here. One can clearly see the folds in the cloth on the table.
But I’m more interested in the aluminum tiles on the wall over the range. Takes me back to heaven!
Oh Yeah, our grocery stores still sell bunny cakes with coconut at Easter. The hard to find item is molded bunny butter.
Happy Easter to all who take part!
My memories are not of the Lamb Cake, but of the Bunny Cake — Mom created a most fabulous coconut covered bunny every year. It was standing on a platter surrounded by Easter grass and dyed eggs — it was beautiful! And, yes, I still have the mold — I think I’ll give it a try — Thanks for the memory jog, Charles!
Charles, you didn’t notice the POW bracelet on “Pops” wrist. So popular in the 70′s.
I’m totally inspired – will spend tomorrow afternoon searching the basement for my grandmother’s lamb cake mold. And will definitely try Jo’s toothpick tip.
Makes me yearn for Easters of yore-when I was sure to trip & fall while running around looking for eggs! Mr. Phoenix, I just voted for you for Mr. LA! This to me is a no-brainer. Happy Easter to all!
~Cindy
My Mother always made a white coconut lamb cake with blue jelly bean eyes, black nose and red mouth (also jelly beans). She still makes one every Easter and it’s the delight of her grown children, their spouses, the grand-children and any dinner guests. It always sits on the platter in a “lawn” of shredded green cellophane “Easter Grass”.
Lorin has a secret recipe that’s like a white pound cake. Same wonderful cake for 61 years…
Here’s to animal-shaped cakes!
Do you happen to know what is the white, nuclear-mushroom-cloud-shaped thing on the stove in the background?
Yippie! I remember Lamb Cakes! I just found the molds on Amazon, here’s a short-cut:
http://tinyurl.com/lamb-cake-mold I’m going to make a chocolate lamb! Thank you Charles!
Sara
Happy Easter to all…
Hooray for lamb cakes! I bake one each year; here is last year’s sooper-psychedelic lamb cake, complete with sugar flowers on a bed of tinted coconut!
This pic is hilarious on so many levels. The woman looks exactly like my freind Paul in drag. I swear to god if I sent you a pic that’s him all gussied up for a big night at Sizzler!
Oh, that photo reminds me so much of my dear, late, Aunt Marie and Uncle Lewis from Fords, New Jersey in the mid-50′s. Aunt Marie would have been in a baby blue dress. Always baby blue, just like the new Dodges Uncle Lewis bought every three years. They never had children, having married later in life, so there would have been two baskets, one for me and one for my sister. And while we never had a stand-up bunny cake, Uncle Lewis used to make white cast cement bunnies with pink eyes in his basement, which he gave to everybody he knew as lawn ornaments. I think my parents eventually started begging off, when the bunny count reached 5 in our front yard.
Love the Lamb cake and I have a very old mold that I first used 45 years ago when our son was 1 year old. After I baked it, and tried to un mold it the ears stuck– so being the young wife that I was, I stayed up till 3 a.m. baking a seocnd one, frosting with coconut and it turned out perfect as I had stuck wood tooth picks the 2nd time in the batter when it baked.
Hope my tip work for others — everyone that attended that party were totally empressed by my very special Lamb Cake. the mold I have is very very heavy as it was a professional mold.
Now at age 75, my lamb baking days are over, and not sure who would appreciate my Lamb Mold.
Perhaps an E-Bay item later one. Jo from Anaheim , Ca — high school class of 1951.