Easter holds such beautiful memories from my childhood. Every year we would drive “over the river and through the woods” to my grandmother's house. There was a feeling of excitement in the anticipation of the traditional Easter Egg Hunt. With eleven grandchildren that was a lot of Easter eggs! As much as grandmom was an expert in the kitchen, Grandpop von Hohen was a expert Easter egg hider! He got such a kick out of it! There was always “one more egg” which no one could find. It would usually turn up in a basket grandpop had tied to the ropes of the flagpole and hoisted to the top of the pole! We'd all laugh when the older cousins would finally discover its location and try to get it down.
This special holiday comes at a most wonderful time of year – spring time! Adding to the fun and festive atmosphere of the day was the beauty of my grandmother's gardens. There were bulbs galore! All different varieties and colors of daffodils, tulips and narcissus. There was also a lovely backdrop of the forsythia hedge. Oh, and who could forget those fuzzy pussy willows! We'd be running around the yard in our Easter bonnets and it felt more like we were in the middle of a fairytale. The beauty around us seemed almost magical.
The beauty of the outside graced the inside of grandmom and grandpop's cozy home with colorful floral arrangements scattered throughout the dining and living rooms. But what always graced the center of the Easter Sunday Dinner table? It was the traditional Easter Lamb Cake. This was a pound cake baked in a lamb shaped mold and covered with white frosting and coconut with jelly beans for the eyes, nose and mouth. The silver tray it rested on was beautifully decorated with paper doilies, green Easter grass and sprinkled with colorful hard boiled eggs and all types of Easter candy – jelly beans, chocolate butter creams and coconut nests are the ones I remember most.
I hope you are making beautiful memories for your children and grandchildren. If not, why not start now? They will be so impressed with YOUR Easter Lamb Cake as a centerpiece to your holiday table. Below is the recipe for the Easter Lamb Cake. Enjoy!
Best Pound Cake
Take 2/3 cup sweet butter and 1¼ cups sugar and mix together until creamy. Add ½ teaspoon lemon rind, 1 teaspoon vanilla, pinch of mace or nutmeg and 1 jigger (equals 1 shot) of rum. Sift 2 cups flour, ½ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon baking powder. Blend with butter and sugar mixture with 2/3 cup milk. When blended add 3 eggs, one at a time, beating each one in well. If preferred add ½ cup nuts or currants. Pour into a buttered and floured lamb shaped mold and bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Fluffy White Frosting
1 cup sugar ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar 2 egg whites 1 teaspoon vanilla
Combine sugar, cream of tartar, 1/3 cup water and a dash salt in a saucepan. Cook and stir until bubbly and sugar dissolves. In a large bowl combine egg whites and vanilla. Add sugar syrup very slowly to unbeaten egg whites while beating constantly at high speed about 7 minutes or until stiff peaks form. When cool, frost the cake and sprinkle with coconut. Make eyes, nose and mouth with appropriate colored jelly beans.
www.grandmotherscookbook.com
Carrie J. Gamble is the owner of an independent publishing company, Carrie J. Gamble, Inc. She is the co-author, editor, calligrapher, watercolor artist and publisher of "Grandmother's Cookbook," a collection of her own grandmother's best recipes. (more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
I thought you might like this recipe Carrie...a pound cake, one pound of each, flour, sugar, eggs and butter, beat until fluffy and bake 350 for 30 mins (loaf pan). Isn't that cool? I think that's the original recipe for # cake.
HAPPY EASTER!
I was raised in a traditional military family...so our Easters were getting dressed and going to the Egg Hunt the Navy put on for us. There were thousands of eggs and allot of candy hidden amoung the grass clumps on a driving range (golf), and they would have hundreds of us kids all line up by ages and the youngest would go first at the bang of a gun (like a track meet). The little kids run and fall and for about 10 minutes (which seems like forever to the older kids) the parents get to take pictures of their kids, and then the gun goes off and the next group of kids would race past the littlest kids, smashing eggs and candy on their way, and the next two groups of kids would usually just run to the end of the driving range, then turn around and glean the grounds for any left over candy thery hadn't smashed. Then the Navy served us ham and turkey. All of this was set to that gorgeous shade of Navy Gray.
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Jeanette Doney (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 307 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Mar 16, 2008 at 8:36:57 AM
Thank you for posting the pound cake recipe. I know there are many, many versions but this is most likely the original. (because it follows the pound of each ingredient formula and is the reason for the recipe's name) I'm glad my article brought back childhood memories of your Easters on the bases. There was a lot of competition, but it sounds like so much fun! Happy Easter to you and your family!
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Carrie Gamble (7 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments) on Sunday, Mar 16, 2008 at 1:01:30 PM
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