a spring lamb...

Every Easter when I was growing up, my mom made a cake shaped like a lamb. This year, as I was preparing to celebrate Easter with my fiance's family - I thought that it would be really cool to carry on this tradition with them. I was especially excited because my sister was visiting from New York and my brother was going to come down from SF with his girlfriend to help prepare the cakes. I bought two lamb cake molds - mostly because I didn't know which one would look better - and I thought it would be fun to make two of them with the 5 of us. The above shot shows the two molds.

Here is the first (larger) lamb just out of the pan. It was very hard to remove! I greased the pan, but I don't know what happened...

For the smaller cake, we decided to channel the movie "Steel Magnolias" and make a surprise red velvet lamb - that would look like a real lamb when it was cut into. This is definitely not part of the original family tradition, but Bridget and Dave were excited about making something playful. Here is the red velvet cake as it is hidden under cream cheese frosting.

After the icing was slathered on and the shredded coconut was applied - the smaller cake did indeed look like a lamb. However, the larger cake looked like a fluffy white lap dog.

Here are the lamb cakes at Easter dinner just about to be cut into. The family does not yet suspect that there is red cake hiding inside one of them. :)

The reveal! As Bridget cut off the head, there was a collective gasp! It was really funny.

Here are the two cakes halfway eaten! A success! By next year, hopefully they will look more like lambs and less like dogs. Happy Easter!