As Easter approaches, people around the country will be dyeing eggs, preparing baskets, attending Easter Vigils… and baking lamb cakes. These aren't cakes made of lambs, nor standard sweet cakes iced with pictures of lambs.
Rather, the cake itself is baked in the shape of a lamb (usually a nestled lamb with folded legs), and topped with a sprinkling of powdered sugar, or swags of buttercream piped to look like wool.
These confections have a long history in Central Europe, from the German osterlamm, to the Polish baranek wielkanocny, to the Alsatian lammele. And they also have their fans in America.
Lamb-shaped molds date back centuries
When early Christians connected Jesus' death on Good Friday with the tradition of the sacrificial Passover Lamb, lambs became a symbol of Easter. Add in a return to buttery, eggy pastries after Lent, and you've got a tradition.
It's not clear exactly when lambs started surfacing in cake form, but in Central Europe there are lamb-shaped pans that date back centuries. The Bavarian Bakery Museum has old copper and brass molds in their collection, whereas the Alsatian versions were often made of ceramic.
Cecilia Rokusek heads the National Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and grew up with a traditional lamb cake (Velikonoční beránek) baked by her grandmother in a cast-iron mold.
"It was heavy," she remembers. "I think she probably got it from her grandmother."
Rokusek was raised in a small South Dakota town with a large Czech population. Many families would actually bring their Easter lamb cakes to church.
" My mother had sort of a wooden platter, and we would take it on there," Rokusek remembers.
"We'd be standing in line and the priest, he would bless it. And then we would put it back in the car, have the mass, and go home."
In the 1940s, the company now known as Nordic Ware began mass-producing aluminum versions of the lamb pan. Susan Brust, whose family started the company in Minnesota, and who is now vice president and director of new product development, says that while the lamb cake is not part of Nordic tradition, it is part of the traditions of many of the people in the state.
"We've got a lot of German people, Polish people here," explains Brust.
Brust said her mother would make a lamb cake every year, covered with sweetened coconut to represent wool (stuck on with buttercream frosting). Sometimes it would also have toothpicks baked inside to support the ears, which had to be navigated upon serving.
Beyond the lamb pan
As with every photogenic treat, lamb cakes have spread further thanks to social media – where people have shared everything from Martha Stewart perfection to lamb cakes gone wrong.
New Orleans baker Bronwen Wyatt, known for her extravagantly decorated cakes, figured out that you can create your own lamb cake without a specialized pan, which invited even more lamb cake-bakers into the flock. The tutorial, which Wyatt developed a couple years ago and shared on Instagram, involves constructing the lamb's body from a trimmed loaf cake, making a neck and head out of some artfully trimmed muffins held in place by chopsticks, and coating the whole thing in enough buttercream to hide the seams. The end result can be surprisingly lamb-like – and adorable.
"Because the way the head is affixed, they always have this kind of jaunty, attentive bent," laughs Wyatt.
The cakes people bake using her tutorial have been delightfully unhinged. From lambs with quizzically cocked eyebrows, to lambs whose wooly coats are made of flower petals, to lambs that simply defy description. Wyatt loves them all.
"They are just as joyful to look at when somebody makes them with a lot of skill, or if somebody makes them who is an amateur baker," says Wyatt. " In some ways, I think the more amateurish they look, the more charming they are. And I'm not sure we can say that about a lot of baked goods."
The reason for the season
In Camas, Washington, Alona Steinke has been baking lamb-shaped cakes for nearly 40 years. She fills the pan with a pound-cake-like mixture, which is sturdy enough to pick up the mold's details, and rich with ground hazelnuts and a splash of rum.
When the cake comes out and cools, Steinke gives her lamb a traditional shower of powdered sugar and red ribbon. But she also adds some American touches – the lamb is surrounded by a pasture of green-dyed coconut, decorated with a scattering of jelly bean eggs.
Steinke didn't actually grow up with lamb cakes – she adopted the tradition when her family hosted a German exchange student, the year the Berlin Wall came down. She says that as a Christian, she thinks of the lamb as representing Christ's resurrection, and the new life of spring.
"It also is a reminder that God loves us, and we need to love our neighbors, and that's so important right now. Man, people are forgetting about love," says Steinke. "We need a little sweetness."
Even if that sweetness is somewhat lopsided, or sticks to the side of the pan, the message remains the same.
Copyright 2026 NPR