Osterlamm
Easter Lamb Cake- Yield
- 1 lamb cake from a 4-cup mold (8 to 10 slices)
- Active
- 30 minutes
- Total
- 3 hours 30 minutes (including cooling)
- Difficulty
- Medium
The story
Holy Saturday, March 27 in 2027, is baking day in many German homes, and one cake turns up again and again: the Osterlamm, a lamb baked in a lamb-shaped mold. It is a Rührkuchen, a plain creamed batter of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, and German food writers call it a fixed part of the Easter table. The image goes back to the Paschal lamb sacrificed at the Jewish Passover. In Christian use the lamb stands for Jesus as the Lamb of God, and the Volksstimme newspaper describes the cake as a symbol of the resurrection. Roast lamb is still a traditional meal once the Lenten fast is over, and in many Christian households the cake stands in for the original sacrificial lamb. In Franconia the batter is sometimes flavored with egg liqueur or ground nuts, but the lamb is traditionally served plain, dusted with powdered sugar so it looks like wool. Molds come in several sizes, so measure yours with water before you mix, then bake on Saturday and let the cake cool overnight.
Ingredients and method
The full recipe, with US and metric measures and stand-ins for hard-to-find ingredients, is part of the Easter edition. Buy it once and keep the PDF.
Want to try first? Frankfurter Grüne Soße is free to cook.