It’s Not Easter at My House Without This Vintage Lamb Cake

When I was a kid, a lamb would manifest itself in cake form on our Easter table every year. My grandmother would bring out her special Wilton Stand-up Lamb Pan (here’s a similar one on Amazon, and another one from Kohl’s), bake a delicious vanilla sponge cake, cover it in buttercream, then nestle the creature in a pasture made of green shredded coconut.

She was a meticulous woman, and decorating the lamb really played to her strengths. My grandmother immigrated to the United States from Burma in 1970 at the age of 53. Almost immediately upon her arrival she learned how to drive a car, and then drove herself to the local community college in east Baltimore, where she attended a cake decorating class. It was there that she became a devoted follower of the Wilton cake decorating technique. 

Thanks to those classes, we had fantastic birthday cakes growing up: Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and rag dolls, all covered with hundreds of tiny buttercream stars — each one made with a #16 Wilton decorating tip. The lamb was no different. My grandmother would spend the morning precisely piping little white stars all over the cake, then she’d carefully dye and shape the coconut nest.

This recipe is the one my grandmother used. She got the recipe from her first American neighbor, a fellow home baker who lived in the same apartment building. A few years ago, my mother gifted me my grandmother’s recipe collection, carefully typed on index cards with handwritten notes. There’s still a chunk missing from the bottom corner of this cake recipe, which was bitten off by me when I was a toddler.

As for why it’s called “Gugglehoff cake,” well, that remains a mystery. I’ve discussed the origins of Gugglehoff cake with my siblings over the years and why we’ve never seen it in any cookbooks or bakeries. We think maybe it’s some non-yeasted version of a Gugelhupf cake. But unfortunately we don’t have any other info, and Googling “Gugglehoff” does not yield many results. We only have this recipe card from the late 1960s/early 1970s.

As an adult, I recreate the lamb cake every year with varying and, quite frankly, comically horrifying results. I still use my grandmother’s Wilton lamb pan and her cake recipe, but my icing work (assisted by the young kids in my family) usually results in something that resembles a zombie lamb, as evidenced above. This is especially comical considering I was a professional artist for over a decade. Luckily the kids don’t mind; they just have a good time slathering on the frosting, adding all the decorations, and eating the cake. 

Even though I inherited my grandmother’s collection of Wilton decorating tips, I usually don’t have the time or patience to pipe a galaxy of stars — until this year. After writing about the lamb cake and my grandmother, I was inspired to take an online buttercream decorating class offered by Wilton. Thirty dollars and 90 minutes later, I had all the skills I needed to pipe flowers and rosettes. As you can see, I got a little enthusiastic with color and texture. There’s no coconut pasture, but I still think my grandmother would be proud.