Lamingtons

What are lamingtons? Cake covered in chocolate, covered in coconut. But there’s more to it than that. They are fairly dense vanilla sponge baked in a rectangular tin then cut into squares; dipped into a chocolate sauce which is runny and very chocolatey and really should make the cake soggy (but it doesn’t); and then tossed in coconut because chocolate, cake and coconut just go together.

But don’t be fooled. Not all lamingtons are equal. There’s the ones bought prepackaged on a plastic tray from the supermarket. These are so light that if they weren’t wrapped in plastic they would float away. Best avoided. Then there’s those from the old-school bakery that still sells spongy white bread, sausage rolls and pies, and cupcakes covered in garishly coloured icing with sprinkles on top. Bob’s Bakery down the road, was one of these and they did great lamingtons. When it was your turn on the cake roster for the school canteen and things hadn’t quite gone to plan for baking, you could pop into Bob’s and buy a cake and almost pretend you’d made it yourself.

Bob’s, like so many bakeries of this kind,  has long gone. Now we have bakery franchises where the name of the baker is irrelevant and everything tastes the same regardless of which store it is bought in.  Their lamingtons are usually not up to scratch either. Which leaves a lamington dilemma. Only solution is to make your own!

This recipe is from David Herbert’s Best Ever Baking Recipes, and is perfect. The cake is just right, the chocolate sauce is perfect, and the coconut…I always use shredded coconut because I like it better, even though lamingtons generally are coated in the desiccated variety. One thing about making lamingtons – the coconut goes brown really quickly, so you have to choose to have either brownish coconut or replenish the pile regularly. I don’t mind the brownish tinge. Enjoy!