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Gluten Free Easter Lamb

Ingredients

  • 60g ground nuts (I usually go with finely ground organic almonds)
  • 60g starch (potato or tapioka starch work well)
  • 60g gluten free flour (I use a mix of half and half organic millet and organic corn flour, but "plain" gluten free flour works also well)
  • 60g sugar (add up to 100g if you prefer the dough sweeter)
  • 100g butter (or margarine)
  • 2 eggs (medium to large)
  • 1 tablepoon of rum or equivalent of rum flavouring
  • 1 teaspoon of baking powder
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • optional: 2 teaspoon of psyllium husk (to better retain moisture in the gluten free dough)
  • optional: 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
  • optional: 60-100g marzipan (diced)

Preparation

Mix eggs and butter/margarine with sugar, salt, and rum (and vanilla extract and psyllium husk, if used). If psyllium husk is used, let the mixture sit for 5-10 min. Next, add flour(s), starch, and ground nuts and mix well. The dough should be thick but still runny. If you like to add the diced marzipan, add it now and carefully blend into the dought.

Grease the mold (in this case, I used a lamb mold) and fill the dough carefully into the greased mold. Make sure that the dough completely fills out the mold (i.e., no air bubbles or voids are left); best to let the dough sit in the mold for a couple of minutes before baking.

For baking, put the mold with the dough in the preheated oven and bake for 30-40 min (this really depends on the kind of mold you use) at 180 C. Once baked, let the mold and dough cool down before carefully removing the mold.

Traditionally, the Easter lamb can be coated with icing sugar just before serving it on Easter Sunday (usually, you would bake it the day before). Whatever mold you use, the baked cake keeps for a day or two - but then dries quickly (as with many glutenfree pastries). If there are still leftovers at this point, put some slices in the oven and toast them lightly before spreading some butter on it.