I’ve never made lamingtons before and as we have some international guest I thought I’d introduce them to a good Aussie favorite.

First thing to do is find a recipe, a quick go on google found me this Lamington Recipe from sbs.com.au, said to be the favorite of a CWA (country women’s association) member so it must be bloody good.  I didn’t have any cornflour or wheaten cornflour (I’m not sure how different this is from regular cornflour) so I just used plain flour.  I thought pouring hot butter straight into the cake batter was a bit odd, I’ve never come across a cake recipe like this before.   This is the CWA we are talking about though and if anyone knows anything about lamingtons it should be them so I did as I was told.

Out of 3 eggs 2 were double yolked!

I must have done something wrong or maybe using plain flour was a bad idea because it was a complete flop.  I ended up with a nice even flat cake approximately 1cm thick, definitely not something that can be cut into 5cm cubes.  It wasn’t all bad, I cut some up and had it with a cup of tea and it was quite good.

rather flat sponge cake for making lamingtons that just didn’t work

Since the first cake was about 1cm thick and could not possible be cut into 5cm cubes I tried a second recipe.  This Lamington Recipe one is more butter cake than sponge cake, doesn’t involve hot butter.  I followed the direction to the T the first time round and produced a nice looking 3cm high cake, pretty even on top.  It is still not quite high enough for 5cm cubes, I guess I’m going to have slightly flat lamingtons because I can’t be bothered trying another recipe.  I made a second batch of the same recipe, so we’d have enough to go around and I had to deviate from the recipe a tad.  First off, I’d run out of self raising flour so I had to make some up with plain flour and baking powder.  I lost count of how many teaspoons of baking powder I’d put in so I added one more just to be sure.  Then I didn’t quite have enough castor sugar so I put in half a cup of icing sugar.  Finally when I cracked the eggs I found one that was at the back of the fridge had frozen solid and I had to peel the shell off.  I didn’t have time to let it defrost and it was my last egg so in it went and I let the beater deal with it.

second effort on the cake for lamingtons worked a bit better. I followed suggestions on the recipe and used a tea towel over the cooling rack to avoid indents

and now for the icing.  I’d better check that I actually have desiccated coconut.  I have a feeling I have some in the freezer, I’ve heard that you should keep things like almond meal and desiccated coconut in the freezer as they go rancid quickly.  I’ll try to find a source for this and find out exactly why and what items should be frozen.

Talking about the freezer, I have left the cakes out overnight, now I should gladwrap them and put them in the freezer.  After reading comments on recipe sites so many people say it makes it so much easier to cut the cake.

cake cut into squares ready for the chocolate and coconut coating

a little while later …

mixing chocolate icing for the lamingtons

coating the lamingtons with the chocolate icing

coating the lamingtons with coconut

OK, icing and coconut coating has been applied with some help from the littlies.  I found that if the icing started pulling crumbs of the cake and getting gluggy then 20 seconds in the microwave really help things along.

Finished product! Slightly uneven and a little bit messy but they are definitely lamingtons