lamingtons!

So, of course I'll take any excuse to bake. It was Australia day a few days ago (the 26th to be exact) and I decided to try lamingtons this year. I thought I'd make enough for me and hubby to bring to our respective workplaces, which meant I'd be allowed to make one batch of sponge-cake-based lamingtons, and one batch of madeira-cake-based lamingtons, right? :) In truth, that was just an excuse for me to also try baking madeira cake too... and it didn't quite go according to plan, as it turned out that one sponge cake produced enough lamingtons for both me and hubby, and the madeira cake recipe I eventually decided on ended up being a fake lemon cake. But the sponge cake lamingtons turned out well enough, and we will conveniently forget about attempting the madeira cake (although I think I will keep searching for the elusive perfect madeira cake recipe...)

I found my recipe for the sponge cake base here (the latest amazing food blog I've stumbled upon - love the photography and recipes here), which I've reproduced below:

For the sponge cake

Ingredients:
3 large eggs
190g butter, room temperature
190g granulated white sugar
160g plain flour, sifted
40g potato starch, or corn flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbinate of soda

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a 22.5cm square cake tin with butter.

The original recipe says:
In a large bowl, mix everything together on a slow speed with an electric hand mixer, until combined.

I didn't actually believe mixing everything together would work for me, even though the pictures in the blog told me it would! So I mixed the butter and sugar together until combined, then added the eggs, then the remaining ingredients.

When combined, transfer the mixture to the tin. Smooth the top and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Cool for 5 minutes in the tin, and then turn out onto a wrack. When cool slice as needed.


For the chocolate coconut coating, I adapted the recipe from here.

Ingredients:

20g butter
400g icing sugar
200g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
120ml milk
about 300g desiccated coconut

Method:

Put the coconut into a shallow dish.

Put the icing sugar, dark chocolate, butter and milk in a heatproof bowl and place over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir constantly until melted and combined. Turn off the heat, but keep the bowl over the pan of hot water so the mixture stays liquid.

Dip each piece of sponge into the chocolate mixture so that it is covered in chocolate. I found the best way to do this is to plop the sponge into the bowl with your fingers, use a large spoon to turn the sponge piece around to ensure it's completely coated, and then use a fork to scoop out the piece (not pierce it) so the excess chocolate drips off, before placing (or in my case dropping) the chocolate coated piece of cake into the coconut. But you can use whatever method works best for you. The end result will always be a mess of coconut and chocolate and cake crumbs, as well as lamingtons :)

Gently toss in the coconut so it is completely covered.

Place the lamingtons on a plate until completely set.

lamingtons of a less guilty size

lamingtons of a more photogenic size