For as long as I can remember, every Easter my grandma would make a homemade lamb-shaped pound cake using a cast-iron mold. The cake was frosted with seven-minute frosting, then coconut and the final touches were green coconut grass and jellybeans.
Food plays a big part in connecting your memories to the current generation. By recreating my old Easter memory, it is now imbedded hopefully in their memories to pass on as special family history.
Sometimes the food is hard to fully recreate and has to get a new twist in order to share it and the memory of a loved one. As in the case of Grandma’s Easter Cake.
Let’s stir-in my memories of my grandma’s Easter lamb cake.
Thinking About Lamb Cake:
A few days before Easter, my thoughts kept thinking about the lamb cake. At this short notice, I couldn’t make the lamb cake because my sister has the lamb mold and she lives in another state. I really didn’t want to buy a mold as I am sure I couldn’t find the cast-iron one. After I thought it over, I finally came up with an alternative plan. One thing you need to know about me is that I am a thrifty person, and when I bake or cook things, I put extras in my standing freezer.
In a nutshell my food management goes like this: Whenever I am cooking, I always plan to get several meals from most of our foods. A good example is pot roast, which the cut of meat might be called English roast or chuck roast. For my pot roast, I usually use a 4-5 pound roast, with which I brown the outsides in the Dutch Oven and then it simmers for 1 1/2 to 2 hours in the chosen liquid till tender and then add all the vegetables. Cook till those are tender too, followed by thickening the juices to make a wonderful gravy.
We love pot roast, but the dish we make from the leftovers is our favorite, which we simply call pot roast soup. I make a huge pot of soup that we get a couple of meals out of, and then I portion it into quart bags. Each bag then gets 6 ladles, which is one meal for my husband and I.
This sort of thinking goes into baking. I recently made seventy-two 2-bite yellow vanilla mayonnaise cupcakes, which we ate about a dozen frosted over a couple of days. The unfrosted cupcakes I first freeze in a single layer and then put them in another container where I layered them using wax paper in between the layers.
By individually quick freezing (IQF) them, I can take out exactly what I need when I need it. For this memory, I pulled out about two dozen. I’ve included the recipes below so you can make them yourself.
Vanilla Mayo Mini Cupcakes & Cake Rounds
Ingredients
Cake Batter
- 2 1/3 cups flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 1//2 cups sugar
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 1 1/2 teaspoons real vanilla
- 3/4 cups milk room temperature
7-Minute Frosting
- 2 egg whites
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 1/4 teaspoons lemon Juice
- 1/3 cup water
- 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla
Instructions
Mixing Cake
- Preheat oven to 350°F on regular bake (not convection).
- Before mixing, ensure the eggs and milk are at room temperature so they blend smoothly with the mayonnaise.
- Bring the eggs and milk to room temperature before mixing. Let the eggs sit out for about 30 minutes, and warm the milk for 15–20 minutes (or microwave just a few seconds until the chill is gone). Optional quick method: Place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes to bring them to room temperature fast.
- Grease and flour the cake pan or line the bottom with parchment and grease and flour only the sides.
- If making 24 minis with the 5‑inch cake, prepare the cake pan as directed. If making minis only, line the mini muffin pans with paper liners.
- Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
- Beat the sugar, mayonnaise, eggs, and vanilla on medium speed until well blended.
- Add half the flour mixture, then half the milk, mixing on low speed. Repeat with the remaining flour and milk.
- Fill mini cups 1/2 full; use about 1 cup of batter for the 4.5" pan and 1 1/2 cups for the 6"pan
- Bake minis 9-11 minutes; 4.5' 18-22 minutes; 6" cake 22-26 minutes
7 Minute Frosting
- Add 1½ to 2 inches of water to the bottom pot of your double boiler and bring it to a gentle simmer.
- Set the double-boiler insert on top (bottom not touching the water).
- Add egg whites, sugar, lemon jice, and 1/3 cup water to the insert; stir just to belnd.
- Once the insert is over the simmering water, start mixing on low speed to avoid splashing. Increase to high speed and beat for exactly 7 minutes, until the frosting is glossy, thick, smooth, and holding stiff peaks.
- Remove from heat.
- Fold in 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
- Use immediately
Notes
My New Twist:
To help bring the memory of my grandma’s cake alive I had to have a new twist on her original recipe. Really, my grandma’s whole cake was delicious, but if I had to focus on the elements that gave it the Yum factor, it was the frosting and coconut.
Since my sister had the lamb mold, I texted her if she had grandma’s recipe. She quickly texted me back, saying she gave me the recipe a long time ago. She was right. I finally found it in my recipe box.
The image below is a copy of what my sister sent. It includes all of my grandma’s notes.
Looking over the 7-minute frosting, I noticed the note about “stirring with finger until finger can no longer remain”. I thought that was funny and sort of unsanitary. Why would I need to do that? My sister said it was for the temperature to know when to start mixing. I wasn’t keen on this, so being Nancy Dru I did some Sleuthing. I decided after the sleuthing that it wasn’t necessary to stir with my finger and I could mix the frosting with my electric hand mixer. Once I put the bowl on the double boiler, I started mixing with the electric hand mixer for exactly 7 minutes.
That method turned out great. One other tweak I had to do was that my cream of tartar was very, very old. I hate to say this, but the date on the bottom said 2002 and was hardly used. Cream of tartar is an acid that helps to stabilize the egg whites (I learned this by Googling it when I was checking for a substitute for cream of tartar). There were several substitutes, but I decided on a 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice. Honestly, it is such a small amount that another suggestion was to leave out.
I am sorry I do not have photos of me making the frosting, but as you can see from the photo below, they turned out really cute. Best of all, they were absolutely yummy. 😋 One bite and it brought back all the memories of my grandma’s cake and the Easter gatherings we would always have at my mom and dad’s house. My family loved hearing the stories, especially when I told them about the recipe and stirring with your finger. They thought that was funny too!
A Twist Was All That Was Needed:
Everybody loved the Easter stories, but best of all they loved the 2-bite Easter cupcakes. It is funny that I never made this 7-minute frosting before, and I really love how easy it is to make and frost. I also like the fact that there isn’t the added fat like butter. Only a small change was necessary.
Sometimes a food or even an old family tradition has to be twisted or tweaked to bring the memory to life. An easy twist is all that it took for my Grandma’s Easter cake recipe to come to life.
Maybe the next time a memory comes to you, you might twist it to pass the memory on.
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Happy Sleuthing,
Hi Nancy, the Easter cup cakes look delicious and appetising, but what I don’t understand is where does the Lamb come into it, were the moulds shaped as lambs ?. Your Grandma would have been so pleased with you :).
Hi Stephen,
The lamb represents Jesus, “the Lamb of God”.
I googled lamb-shaped cake and now I finally realized why we had lamb shaped cake on Easter. It is because it is a German Tradition! My grandfather came from Berlin and my heritage is mostly German.
Thank-you for your question because of your question, I found out more about my heritage.
Now you know the rest of the story.
Nancy Dru