lamingtons

lamingtons

• 25 Jan 2012

Tomorrow is Australia Day so I wanted to make something traditionally Australia. Last year I made a lamington cake but this time I went with the original lamington, a chocolate coated and coconut covered cake. I found them in every cake shop when I was in Croatia last year and apparently, they're popular in Hungary as well. Lamingtons seem to have taken over the world.



A lamington drive was a popular fund raiser at our school. We always ordered a few dozen lamingtons which we'd then place in the deep freeze. Mum thought they'd be safe there until we discovered that frozen lamingtons taste pretty good!



I last made lamingtons when I was in high school and I remembered it being a messy task which ended with all my fingers coated in chocolate icing and coconut. I haven't had a home made lamington in years.



A day before you need the lamingtons, you make the base using either a butter cake or a sponge cake recipe which is then baked in a special lamington tin. I didn't have one so I went out and bought one specially. Once the cake cools you store it in the fridge. Cooling the cake makes trimming the edges and cutting the cake into squares a whole lot easier. Here's a recipe close to the one I used except I added 50 grams of melted dark chocolate to the chocolate icing mixture.



The process was as messy as I'd remembered. It took close to an hour to coat the 24 lamingtons so next time I'd leave half the cake in the fridge until it was needed. 

Using a fork to dip the cakes into the icing is what's recommended but the cake tends to crumble. I found dipping the cake by hand was more effective but that meant I had to wash my hands 24 times.

I stirred the chocolate icing in between each coating and added boiling water to thin out the icing when needed. 

The coconut needs to be renewed regularly as it gets stained brown pretty quickly. I only used enough coconut to coat 4 lamingtons and then would replace the coconut. Desiccated coconut is suggested in most recipes but shredded coconut looks prettier. 

I had one for my breakfast on Sunday and it tasted even better than I remembered. I don't normally eat cake for breakfast but I'd just been to the gym and by the time I'd finished photographing the lamingtons it seemed rude not to try one....

Happy Australia Day,

Jillian