Lamb-entations
April 9, 2009 Like the Mardi Gras King Cake, I suspect that the Easter Lamb Cake is just inherently Wrecky. I mean, this one Jamie B. sent in is a good one:
So really, it's like shooting apples* in a barrel to go after these things: just too darn easy.
However, I will go after the smoking lamb cakes:
I've seen several of these cigarette-puffing lamb cakes now, and I'm totally baffled. I get the lamb/Easter connection, but where's the cigarette feature? This one Monique R. found actually has a "Happy Birthday" sign around its neck, but most say "Happy Easter". Here's a better example:
Here's a variation, lest you think only one bakery out there is making these crazy things:
I'm guessing this is some kind of regional tradition, but I look forward to you lovely readers filling me with your wisdom. Explain this madness to me in the comments, so we can all learn something today, eh?
And before I leave you, here's one more photo sent in by Kat:
It's not really a Wreck; I just love that little girl's expression as she's preparing to lop off the lamb's head. You can almost hear the Responsible Adult going "Now, dear, let me help you..." as she's gleefully hacking away. Heehee! Oh, and that spot of jam is well-placed, too.
*Yes, I know it's supposed to be "fish in a barrel", but I would never shoot a fish. Too messy.
**For the record, this is the hardest word to learn to spell by looking up in the dictionary, ever.
UPDATE: And the answer is....[drum roll]
I don't know. Yep, despite having lots of theories floated my way - each one seemingly more bizarre than the last - I still haven't heard a silver-bullet explanation for the smoking lamb cake. However, reader Rosemary was kind enough to compile the most prevalent/reasonable-sounding theories in her blog here, so check those out and see which you think it is.
Reader Comments (327)
Ahh....the Easter lamb cake! A purely kitchy art form! Personally, I make a lamb cake every year, and try to make it as ridiculous as possible! Why would you want a realistic-looking sweet and gooey lamb sitting in a pile nuclear-colored coconut anyway?
Yes, I've filled mine with jam too. Heck, I even made a Rice Krispies lamb one year, and giggled uncontrollably when the head slowly started tilting to the left. This year, I plan to make it with red velvet cake, cover it with fluffy frosting and coconut, and color the eyes and ears neon pink.....culinary genius, no?
Tigerwolf: ROFL Thanks; made my day, and reminded me of a favourite song, too!
Amy B.
I think they are a reference to "Smokies" an illeagal form of meat supplied to ethnic minorities, more info here (you may want to put your coffee and biscuits down first) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article443286.ece
I would like to challenge the actual decorators on the list to create a smoking lamb cake, with the addition of a little frosting blindfold to complete the firing squad theory. Put it in your display case and next year we can see if there are unquestioning wreckarator imitators who do the same thing.
never been here before.
but it's nice.
do tho have something perhaps somewhat helpful to add.
it is not a cake.
but if you go here:
http://burp-nevergrowup.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html
you will find a smoking lamb &, at least possibly most likely, someone who knows whyfor art it smokes.
or you could ask a baker. but i think she will know.
seek & ye shall find, & like that.
putting the good in good friday,
i remain
All right, I have no idea what's up with the smoking lamb either, but I'll see your "yarmulke" and raise you a "guinea pig." What kind of 3rd-grade teacher tells a kid to look up "guinea pig" in the dictionary to find out how to spell it? The kind that taught my 3rd-grade class, that's what kind!
There is only one reason for the cigarette. To get their cakes posted on this site and to read all the comments.
Man, these lamb cakes *have* been around awhile!
http://www.langfordfamily.com/pioneers/Polish_Bandera%20County%20Courier_files/Frances100.jpg
Seriously, c & p it; it's worth it. She's about 110, the outdoor (?!?) photo's from Victorian times by her dress, and the cake's a lamb.
Seriously, if they're using actual cigarettes, they're meant to represent cigarettes, not scrolls or whatever. It is way too gross to stick a real cigarette in a cake if you don't mean it!
I like the smoking "black sheep" theory. Actually, I've got the pan, I'm thinking of making one myself.
I'm pretty sure the lamb is from Revelation 5
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation%205&version=31
but I'm not sure why it's smoking.
Only thing i found when i researched was pictures of sheep smoking in anti-smoking ads. The posters suggested that people follow blindly like sheep and do what everyone else is doing, one i found of several sheep with cigs their mouths with the caption 'BE YOURSELF' at the bottom.
Or even this one:
http://www.brightonandhovepct.nhs.uk/healthprofessionals/hplibrary/images/34.0.L.022.jpg
Okay people, I have, I think, the most logical explanation of this damn smoking lamb. Typically, as a cliche, (you sometimes see it in old cartoons) they pass out cigars when a baby is born. Jesus was supposedly born in a manger, with lambs, etc. In fact, I can even remember seeing lambs and others in a manger-like setting with cigars in their mouths to celebrate Jesus' birth. (I think it was a Christmas card or something) Maybe the people that made these cakes confused Easter with the birth of Jesus instead of the resurrection... After explaining all of this, I realize it's probably not the most logical explanation at all. Oh well... At least I gave it a try.
First thing that comes to mind for me, especially for the brown ones, is Joe the Camel. Gotta be, right? Now...the white lambs, I dunno! I am stumped.
None of these responses *really* explains the prevalence of these cigarette-smoking lambs. Hasn't anyone been to ask a wreckerator yet?
WHY IS THE LAMB SMOKING A (genuine) CIGARETTE? WHY? WHYYYYY?
Howdy everyone: So, if this is a scroll, as we suspect it is, then it's a really bad reference to Revelation 5 and 6 where the lamb (i.e., Jesus, who is risen from the dead according to the Christian Easter celebration) takes the scroll from God, the Father. The lamb is the only one who can open the "many sealed" scroll.
My grandmother used to make a lamb cake every easter for a little girl she babysat. She used to make sure the head stayed up by spearing it with long wooden skewers. Creeped me out. On the bright side she covered the whole cake in white icing and then put shredded coconut on it so the cake actually had a fairly realistic looking texture. Pretty cool. She never made it smoke though...I guess I missed out all those years ago...
Given that Passover & Easter celebrate essentially the same thing (Jesus the lamb, sacrificed to save many, actual lambs sacrificed to save the firstborn children when the Angel of Death was let loose in Egypt), I would say that the ceremonial slaughtering of the lamb is perfectly logical, from a Judeo-Christian perspective. The Last Supper was the Passover meal too. But the smoking... Beats me.
I'm going to agree with Emily... it's definitely a paint brush with blood on the end representing the blood of the lamb.
I don't care what it means- scroll, candle, joke. I want a smokin' lamb cake. Maybe just to lop off the head with glee. Maybe we should all do that at least once in our lives. Call it therapy- on that note, make mine a bunny.
To s/he who posted that it looked like the "Marlboro CAMEL", shame on you. You don't have to be a smoker to not have hidden under a rock for the near entirety of the 20th century. Please tell me you were born after Joe was retired.
As for the little girl chopping off poor lammykin's head, that's definitely her first communion and that is an ice cream lamb, as explained by Areia. I had one with the grenadine. Bwahahahahahaha.
So symbolism is lost on the very young. It would have to be since I'm not sure these days I would willingly chop off a lamb's head (real or dairy) just to see the blood spring forth. D:
That's a Passover lamb, holding a stick covered in its own blood, while saying Happy Easter. perhaps even more tragic than a smoking lamb. "Passover" so the holy spirit would "pass over" the homes of Hebrews with lamb's blood on the frames, taking only the first-born sons of the Egyptians.
They are passvoer lambs.
"When the judgment fell on Egypt, God made a provision of escape through the blood of the Passover Lamb that appeared on the door posts of the houses."
they are paint brushes not ciggarettes, but they sure do look like ciggarettes
eighmie
I definitely have the ancient cast-iron mold for the lamb cake... The one time we pulled it out of the basement, it was as a joke. I can't believe they are still using it!
These are Passover cakes, hence the yarmulkes, and it's not a cig it's a bloody paintbrush to paint their blood over the doors of believers.
That's what i think anyway.
I thought I'd try and help out by researching the lamb cake/cigarette tradition, but was stopped short when I saw this one (which looks more like a small, and perhaps possessed, dog to me): http://www.post-gazette.com/food/20010405mailbox.asp
That mysterious object impaled into the lamb's neck is a burning scroll. A scroll is a religious symbol for the Old Testament. Combining the burning scroll with the lamb represents the end of the Old Testament sacrificial system and the beginning of the New Testament system of believing in Christ's sacrifice... through the event of the "ultimate sacrifice" of Jesus, aka the Lamb of God. Why this needs to be in cake form, I'll never understand.
And there you have it... your answer... AND it's dipped in sugary goodness. :)
I actually have one of these cake pans and I made one wrecky looking lamb cake a couple years ago! (It was a horrifying red velvet cake too.) I found it at a Wegman's super market in Buffalo. It reminded me of the butter lamb's that are an Easter tradition out here.
background (seems to be a Polish tradition): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_lamb
pictures of the butter lamb: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/butterlamb/
Despite my lack of frosting talent, the family got a big kick out of the "butter-cream" lamb. I even made the little flag to stick on it's backside. :)
All the Passover related comments make absolutely no sense for several reasons:
First and foremost, unless it is angel (no religious pun intended) food cake or some other unleavened product, which I highly doubt in this type of mold), we Jews are not eating it during Passover and we certainly are not buying it from your standard grocery store bakery (because it is not super specially kosher for Passover). Nothing that is leavened (rises) during Passover, including cakes, Wrecks as well!
Second, look closely at some of these Wrecks, those are real cigs! Tobacco and all. 80-90 cent recent tax increase included! If is to represent a paintbrush, which, btw, was not actually used to tag the doors of the Jews in Egypt, then why use an actual cig?
Finally, if it were some Jewish religious symbol, for goodness sake, there would be some latent guilt and there is none here!
Of course, I have no better explanation than anyone else, but I did not want the Pesach lamb wandering when he should at home with his nagging mother reminding him to call more often.
Have to agree with Astarte, here. There's no way this is for a Jewish celebration. Kosher for Passover cakes are leaden by default. They don't rise. To build something that high with that sort of structure out of kosher for Passover cake... I shudder. Just stay out of the event horizon because you could be creating a black hole.
As for celebrating the end of Passover? Nobody does that in any official capacity, unless you consider eating an entire large pizza by yourself an organized celebration. Seriously, after 8 days of matzah, etc. you celebrate by getting your kitchen back to "normal mode" and eating massive quantities of bread products and metamucil.
The paschal lamb is a big part of the Passover story, but the focus really isn't on that one specific element. The 10 plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the mass movement of an entire population... if there's one symbol that is going to be used to represent the holiday, it ain't the lamb. It's matzah, if anything.
I am dying to know what the smoking lamb cake is all about. Someone PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE at least get a phone number for one of these bakeries... I'll call and ask, myself! And I promise to post back whatever I find out.
Someone said it must be a cigarette because of the line where the filter is, but if you look at the wiki page for Paschal candles someone posted, the Paschal candles all have a line also.
I'm in the camp that believes it's either a Paschal candle, or was originally a Paschal candle that morphed into a cigarette via general ignorance of the cake makers.
Maybe the cigarette is so people can say they had "smoked lamb" at Easter? ;-)
This sucks, I'm Jewish so I have to eat crappy flat bread. YUCK!
-Isabelle
P.S. Luckily, I wouldn't have to eat those massacred cakes if I was offered the chance. HAHA!
Emily! How could you? No one can give up chocolate! It's addictive! It's delicious, no one could give it up for forty days. But I'm Jewish, so how should I know. I don't have to not have chocolate for forty days.
-Isabelle
You know... a few years ago my mom ordered one of these lamb cakes, and considering what it was, it looked okay. That didn't cover the shrieks though when she cut into it and we discovered she had ordered a red velvet lamb cake!
Maybe it's to represent the sacrifice of the lamb, and what do prisoners do before they're put to the firing squad? They get to have their last cigarette.
HEY! Leave King Cakes alone! Have you ever tried to make a cake while sucking down on Hurricanes? Under those conditions, every King Cake is a masterpiece! And don't you forget it! ;-)
Flipping channels this weekend I spotted someone making a lamb cake & had to watch after already seeing this post. They iced the cake & then covered it in coconut. They added raisin eyes, a cherry mouth, a red ribbon & a bell around its neck. And then stabbed it with the "flag & staff." They called it the "Paschal Lamb" cake & place it in a basket & bring it to church for blessing. It's a very traditional Polish dessert.
My grandmother used to make a lamb cake every year at Easter. It was a non-smoking lamb, so I have no insight to the smoking lambs.
My dad used to make his best lamb noises when they'd cut into the cake. Yes, I used to cry every year... but the cake was still tasty.
I think it's the lambs last cigarette before going to the "firing line" or the sacrifice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_of_God
The sacrificial lamb = Jesus = basically, a good friday cake.
What's funny is a) it needs a blindfold and b) setting it up for an execution is just weird, considering it's suggesting a sort of glee over killing jesus.
OMG, that's my apartment in the fourth pic down, with the frosted lamb cake. I bought it at a bakery on Houston St in NYC for a friend's birthday (in December). I'd been fascinated by these things forever and had never seen a frosted one before, so I had to have it. It was impossible to eat - way too hard, but it kept several weeks.
Just to add, these smoking lamb cakes are available year-round, and I have a pic of one with a packet of http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=lamb&w=24771397%40N00" REL="nofollow">Sweet & Low in its mouth rather than the cigarette. If someone can explain that, I'd really appreciate it!
Emily is right - it's the sacrificial lamb. These aren't for Passover though. They are for Easter. Sacrificial lamb/lamb of God...
My grandmother used to make these (she's Italian) every Easter. The "cigarette" that you see is the paintbrush. We used to joke about it as kids.
Hey, I figured out the lambs smoking thing!
Ancient tradition, was that for passover, a lamb would be sacrificed. So the joke is that they get one last cig before they die, like a last request before a firing squad. Funny, yeah?
And now I read down, and I'm not alone. Ha!
Yeah... the banner...
I actually think that if one asked the bakery, they would look at the person blankly, because they have no idea what he/she is talking about. Even if you showed them the photo, they'd still stare at you. You see, the cake wreckers don't have the slightest idea of why they do things.
But, sure, as there is no real explanation, let's join the guessing:
1) As some others suggested, it was supposed to be something else, like a straw of grass or flowers (there's a lot of Easter cards with the lamb having something like that in their mouth), but the cake wrecker misunderstood or took the easy way out and used a chocolate cigarette.
Sure, possible it was supposed to be a paintbrush or a scroll or the banner or the cross or a candle or a party-what-ever, but - let's face it - that IS a cigarette, not a failed attempt at something else.
2) It is also possible, that in some bakery someone thought it was a good joke to put a cigarette in the sheep's mouth, and the cake ended up in the window, cigarette and all, and then others didn't get the joke, but believed there must be some mysterious symbolism in this and copied the cigarette. After all, that's what we all think, isn't it? Why not a wreck-baker?
Someone has already pointed out that quite a lot of people are altering photos of animals by adding a cigarette, cigar or pipe in their mouths, and that there are a couple of smoking sheep characters (Toot and Smookie), so perhaps it's just another meme thingy.
Also, there is the "don't be sheep" campaign - what that has to do with Easter is another question though...
3) In some medieval paintings people and animals are sometimes shown with a scroll coming out of their mouths depicting sort of a speech bubble. It is possible that the one making the first smoking lamb tried to give it a speech scroll, and it ended up looking as if the lamb was smoking, and - as in the above suggestions, the bake-wreckers just copied what they thought they saw and replicated smoking lambs.
About the "It's not Christian but Jewish" comments: If these lambs are supposed to hold a paintbrush or a bunch of herbs dipped in blood to symbolize the painting of door posts, it has nothing to do with Judaism but is a Christian interpretation of a Jewish story. I think it's very disrespectful, but - people do things.
The Pesach Lamb is not a cute woolly creature (with or without cigarettes and paintbrushes) but food. The only symbolic part of lamb used at Pesach is the bone on the Seder plate.
If a Jewish family serves a lamb cake, they have borrowed the idea from their Christian environment and they are not very observant, as pointed out several times in the comments. Remember the kosher rules on Pesach?
I end with this...
http://www.northendboston.com/marias/images/EasterLamb.jpg" REL="nofollow">Maria's Easter Lamb CakeThe face is so well-made and then attached to the giraffy body and covered with pretty flowers and what not... LOL
I love it :-)
(BTW, they have a "Happy Birtdday cake")
On PolishForums.com (http://www.polishforums.com/easter_lamb_cake_histroy-8_19191_0.html)
Pryzkatoony says:
"Because some of these lamb cakes fall in with a bad crowd."
That's as good an explanation as any and it made me laugh.
I'm Belgian myself, and I can tell you the last picture is in fact a tradition here.
When catholic children are 6 years old, we have our 'eerste communie', which is the celebration for the first time you can eat a 'ghostie' in the church. Afterwards, there's a family party, in which the child gets lots of presents and after diner we share a cake. The child has to chop off the head of the little cake-lamb. This goes back to a sacrifice for God. The cakes are always white, they actually look exactly the same in every bakery, and there's always a bit of strawberry filling in it which looks like blood when you chop off the head of the little lamb.
I think I even have a picturd of myself doing it. My sister also did it, my nieces and nephews, my husband, everyone I know actually.
Now that I read your blog, is the first time I get it: it IS kind of creepy :D
*my original impression in seeing the cigarette was...
"all that's missing is a blindfold and this is a sheep awaiting execution!"
i mean we're supposed to eat lamb for easter right? and we're supposed to eat the cake??*
What a terrible waste of time and ingredients...hard to believe people would actually PAY for one of those cakes !
Jen, sorry I'm commenting on older posts but I was on vacation and missed a lot so I'm playing catch up now LOL !
It's definitely not a cigarette.. Sorry to all those who liked guessing why a lamb would be smoking lol
Traditionally, it's 'supposed' to be a brush signifying the brushing of lambs blood over the homes threshold for passover..
If people have gone nuts by making it into a cigarette joke, that's all well and good.. But the tradition is that it's a brush...