A Fluffy Butter Lamb for Easter

One of my favorite interests in the kitchen is creating fun art with food.   I have engaged in culinary art ever since I began to learn how to cook. It became integrated in the cooking lessons.  Perhaps it was passed down a little bit from my mom who also loved to cook and bake and spent a great amount of time seeking out recipes with either unique ingredients or decorated foods which were created for its artful presentation as well as consumption.  

Perhaps, one day I will gather up a collection of my past fun with food creations for a separate blog article, but for now, being that it is close to Easter, I wanted to share my step-by-step instructions on creating a fluffy, fuzzy butter lamb.  This adorable furry butter lamb was in my previous post, A Walk Through the Easter Garden, which included this year's Easter tablescape.  If you happened to have missed it, you can read it at this link: A Walk Through the Easter Garden.  

Therefore, since this plump, captivating lamb stole the hearts of some dear friends who participated in the Easter Tablescape Blog Hop and who requested that I include instructions on how he was assembled, I decided to create this article so others can have fun sculpturing this pudgy lamb.  

So lets get started so that you all can give it a try before the Easter holiday is upon us. To begin with, you will need the butter lamb mold.  You can purchase a skinny butter lamb in it's own mold at any grocery store which might carry them for Easter.  It is usually a store which might have customers who are of Polish descent.  Each year, I would purchase the butter lamb in the plastic mold until we moved to an area which no longer carried them at any of the grocery stores.  As a result, I was glad I saved the last purchased mold to make my own.  On the other hand, you can always purchase a solid reusable mold which can be used for many years to come.  I intend to purchase one for future holidays, but haven't yet done an online search.  For now, my purchased plastic mold will suffice.

When spreading the butter into the lamb mold, each side of the lamb takes one softened stick of butter.  For easier clean up, I line each side of the lamb mold with saran wrap.  This makes it easier to lift the lamb from the mold once the butter has hardened in the refrigerator.  

This might be a good time to mention that the temperature of the butter is important and should be almost room temperature when forming it into the mold.  This makes it easier and better to spread into the entire surface of the mold.  However, when it comes to making the "curls" the butter should not be too soft and runny.  It should be butter which has been taken out of the refrigerator and allowed to only slightly soften, enough to press it through a garlic press.

So besides the plastic mold and a pound of butter, you will also need a garlic press to make those darling curls.

The details of the butter lamb from the reused mold will not be that pronounced when reusing a plastic mold, but there is no need to be concerned since the curls will be covering all of the lamb except for the face.

Now its time to cut a small slice of slightly softened butter for the garlic press.  I prefer to do small pieces at a time so that I can add smaller sections of curls to the lamb.

Pushing the butter slowly through the press will give you control over how long of the curls you wish to have.  

When the curls are long enough, take a flat pastry knife and scrape it from the press.

I even choose to scrape the curls from the pastry knife onto a small grapefruit knife since it is so much smaller and can help position the curls exactly onto the section of the lamb I am working on.

You can start any where on the lamb, but I begin around the neck.

More and more sections are added to the lamb until it is as fluffy as you wish.  I like the full and disheveled look.

With all of the curls on the lamb, it is time to add the eyes, nose and ears.  The eyes are made up of two pepper corns.  The nose is a tiny slice of black olive and the ears are two tiny leaves.  Of course, the lamb must be dressed for Easter with a burgundy floral bow.

So lets add the eyes.

And the ears.

And, of course, the sweet little black nose.

And now......the Easter bow.  So nicely dressed for the holiday.

Some finishing touches.

I hope you will add a creamy, woolly and bushy butter lamb to your holiday meal.  Have a wonderful Easter and many blessings to you all.

🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇