These are amazing! Lamingtons, they are called, and they are squares of plain sponge sandwiched together with raspberry jam, covered in chocolate and dipped in DESSICATED COCONUT. I mean how much more could you ask for??
Lamingtons were invented in Australia and I have never seen or heard of them before I came across them in Edd Kimber’s very useful book Say It With Cake. I cooed over them yesterday with my mother, who has borrowed the book because she has to make 50 “finger food puddings” ?? WTF? for a Distressed Gentlefolk’s Memorial Fundraising Curry Buffet (or something) and needed ideas, stat.
Anyway, I left the book with my mother but this afternoon on a whim, thought I would make them.
They are quite straightforward and I made them reasonably successfully with absolutely no recipe at all, having not photocopied Kimber’s recipe before I handed over the book to mumsie.
There are proper recipes you can get for these, Edd Kimber has one in his book, obviously, and Dan Lepard has one on the Guardian website, which I will not reprint here because he once got in touch with one of my readers (who has her own cooking blog – who doesn’t?) and asked her to take down a recipe of his that she had reprinted there. And the Lord knows I’ve got enough trouble without being sat on by Dan Lepard and his beard.
So this is my recipe, but it really is MY recipe, literally made up – it is entirely inauthentic so please don’t all start telling me that these are not real Lamingtons because I don’t really care and they worked for me.
For the sponge
110g butter
110g sugar
110g self-raising flour
2 eggs
For the chocolate dip
75g milk cooking chocolate
75g dark cooking chocolate
I used Menier cooking chocolate from Waitrose
200g bag dessicated coconut
Some raspberry jam, not much – probably 3 tbs in total
Preheat your oven to 170C, grease and line a small shallow baking sheet – mine was about 30cm by 23 cm. If you don’t have one you could use a square cake tin with a loose base.
You may have your own way of making a basic sponge mix, in which case do that. I do this:
1 cut up the butter and put it in a bowl with the sugar. Stick this in your preheating oven for 2 minutes then cream together (snore… so boring) however you usually do this. I do it with a hand whisk.
2 Now whisk in the eggs, one at a time.
3 Now fold in the flour with a metal spoon until it has all mixed in; turn out into your tin/baking sheet and smooth the top as best you can, although it will even itself out in the oven so don’t worry too much about it being perfect.
4 Bake for 10 minutes then take out and leave to cool.
5 Break up the chocolate and put it in a heatproof bowl over a pan of water and put it on your smallest burner turned to the lowest heat and let it sit there and melt for 20 minutes. Once it has melted, set it aside to cool for a bit.
6 Now turn your flat sponge out onto a board and peel off the greaseproof paper. Cut with a sharp knife into even squares the best way you can see how. I didn’t want mine to be especially big and once they are covered in chocolate and then coconut they seem even bigger, so don’t be afraid to make them quite dainty, like about 3cm x 3cm.
7 Make little square sponge sandwiches by spreading some jam on one square and topping it with another sponge square. Then you assemble the lamington by dipping it all over in chocolate, then pressing into dessicated coconut and then leaving on a cooling rack to dry.
You can do this the best way you can see how – if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that my readers are far more ingenious at working out how to do these things than I am – but if I have one suggestion, it is not to tip all your coconut out onto a plate at once.
Dipping the squares in chocolate is a terrifically messy busines and what you don’t want is to spread chocolate all over your entire plateful of coconut because what you want is the brilliant white of the coconut against the dark brown of the chocolate – not brown-flecked coconut against brown chocolate.
Wipe your plate of chocolate smears inbetween dipping sessions if neccessary.
For each lamington, shake out some coconut onto a plate, and then turn and shake, turn and shake, until it is covered, then remove to a cooling rack.
Then stuff them ALL in your face, growling and drooling like Fantastic Mr Fox.
| I don’t know why my photos are coming out so blue at the moment |