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Are you looking for an easy Easter cake or kids’ birthday cake with a difference? How about making a cute (and easy) lamb cake? This delicious white chocolate cake is the perfect cute cake for spring birthdays and it’s surprisingly easy to make. My daughter Thea asked for a lamb cake for her birthday, and this is how to make it.
Making a cute lamb cake is an easy, yet crowd-pleasing cake, and the marshmallow ‘wool’ couldn’t be simpler! Read on for my easy Easter lamb cake tutorial and Pin it for later.
Skip the bottom to see how versatile this white chocolate cake is: I’ve made it as a Hedwig the Owl cake and a cute panda birthday cake too!
Start With a White Chocolate Sponge
I’ve never made a lamb cake before, but as I made a rainbow unicorn cake for Thea’s birthday a few years ago, I thought this would be much easier, and I was right! This lamb cake is simple, but does take a little longer than a basic sponge cake. It’s certainly easier than the unicorn, or my kids’ other favourite chocolate hedgehog cake.
You could actually use a basic sponge recipe, but I added melted white chocolate to my lamb cake, to make it extra special, using this recipe.
This makes the cake rich and extra sweet, and the white chocolate buttercream icing with vanilla makes this lamb cake perfect for celebrations.
Ingredients:
- 100g white chocolate
- 200g butter, at room temperature
- 250g caster sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 250g self raising flour, sifted
- 200ml semi-skimmed milk or oat milk
Grease and line two 7 inch or 8 inch cake tins, and pre heat your oven to 180 degrees C.
Method:
Because this recipe has melted chocolate and milk, it looks more dense than a normal cake at every stage until the end.
- Start by breaking up your white chocolate and melting it gently over a bain marie. Once it’s melted, remove from the heat.
- Use an electric whisk to cream the butter and caster sugar together, it will go into a fairly dense lump, but don’t worry.
- Mix in the vanilla bean paste or extract. It seems like a lot of vanilla, but you need it to balance the sweetness of the white chocolate.
- Beat in the eggs gradually.
- Add about a quarter of the flour and beat in.
- Then add a quarter of the milk and beat.
- Repeat this until all the flour and milk is mixed in.
- Gently mix in the melted chocolate with a spoon.
- Divide equally between the two cake tins, level off and bake for 30 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean, and it’s golden brown.
Cool for 10 minutes in the tin before turning out and letting cool completely.
Icing Your Easy Lamb Cake
You’ll need to make chocolate butter cream icing for this, and I used the following recipe:
Ingredients:
- 100g butter, at room temperature
- 250g icing sugar, sifted
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 160g white chocolate
- a little milk
Method:
- Begin by breaking up your white chocolate and melting it gently over a bain marie. Once it’s melted, remove from the heat.
- Beat the butter until smooth and gradually sift in the icing sugar, beating as you go with a wooden spoon until smooth.
- Mix in the vanilla extract.
- Pour in the melted chocolate and mix.
- The icing needs to be fairly stiff for the lamb cake, but you may find it needs a little milk to soften it enough to be spreadable.
Spread some on top of the bottom cake, put the second cake on top, and ice the top and sides. It doesn’t need to be smooth, as it’s meant to look like wood. You could even make swirls in it with a fork if you like.
Decorating Your Lamb Birthday Cake
Now comes the fun part: making the lamb’s face.
Ingredients:
- 1 bag white mini marshmallows
- 1 bag regular sized marshmallows
- black writing icing or melted dark chocolate and a piping bag
Method:
Practice your lamb face on a plate first, to get use to piping the facial features. I tried my eyes in a couple of ways before deciding on this arrangement. I cut up some pink marshmallows for cheeks, but decided not to use them on my final lamb cake.
First, pipe on your eyes, making sure they are evenly spaced. I found the writing icing sits on top of the cake and doesn’t stick immediately, so you can nudge the lines a little with a cocktail stick if they aren’t quite in the right place.
Next, add the smile with icing, and roll up part of a pink marshmallow for the nose. You could also use a pink sweet.
Then use mini marshmallows to make the ‘wool’ around the face. I made them all stand upright so the round sides faced up, and made a heart shape at the top of the face. I packed the marshmallows closely together, and used a couple of big marshmallows for ears. My older daughter Ava finished adding the marshmallows once I’d done the first layer.
You could also put marshmallows around the sides of the cake, but I thought that might be a bit too rich!
The Finished Lamb Birthday Cake
We were delighted with the lamb birthday cake, especially the birthday girl! But how does it taste? Amazing! It is richer, and sweeter than a normal sponge, thanks to the added white chocolate, and it’s irresistible to white chocolate fans!
Thea and Ava declared it the best birthday cake ever, so I suspect I’ll be making this cake for years to come!
Variations for an Easy Lamb Cake
My easy lamb cake is white chocolate and vanilla flavour, but you could also make this as a lemon cake for a similar effect. Just use a lemon sponge, and lemon butter cream, if you prefer a slightly sharper cake.
Other Ideas to Decorate This Delicious White Chocolate Birthday Cake
You can use the same recipe to make a cute panda face cake. I followed the steps above to make the basic iced cake, and used black ready to roll fondant icing to make the facial features and ears, white ready to roll fondant icing for the highlights on the eyes and nose, and white mini marshmallows for all the white parts. I used a little red food dye for the pink cheeks but pink marshmallows would be perfect too!
This Hedwig, the owl from Harry Potter cake has the same basic iced cake, but this time I broke up ready-made meringues for the feathers, overlapping them as I stuck them to the icing, to make them look more feather-like. I used black, yellow and white writing icing to make the eyes and beak.
I was concerned that the meringue might go soft over night, but it stayed perfectly crisp!
You could also make this into a pig cake, by adding pink food colouring to the icing, and using pink marshmallows. I think it would work as a polar bear or cat too!
I hope you like this easy lamb cake tutorial useful, why not Pin it for later, and check out my other kids’ birthday party cakes below.
