Lamingtons are little snack cakes that comes to us from The Land Down Under. I was introduced to these by those same ex-pat friends who introduced me to the joys of a good prawn sandwich. They’re sponge cake cubes dipped in a chocolate sauce and then rolled in coconut. So simple, and so addictive. When I made these recently I cheated by using a store-bought sponge cake and hacked cubes out of it (it was in the shape of a Bundt cake, you’ll be delighted to know) so that was a good shortcut. The trick of it is making the chocolate coating. You can do the old “microwave cream and pour it over a bowl of chocolate chips and stir” but this is a better, albeit more involved, alternative. Here’s the recipe in full, in case you want to make your own “sponge.” I warn you, this is messy, but that’s half the fun.
For the sponge
3½ oz unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla paste
8½ oz caster sugar
5⅔ full-fat yoghurt
4 medium eggs
7½ oz self-raising flour
1 oz cornflour
½ tsp fine salt
For the coating
5 fl oz whole milk
7 oz granulated sugar
1 oz cocoa powder
1 tbsp golden syrup
½ tsp fine salt
5⅓ dark chocolate, chopped small
8¾ oz desiccated coconut
Line an 8 X 8 baking tin with greaseproof paper and preheat the oven to 300°F
Beat together the butter, vanilla, sugar, yoghurt and eggs until combined, then fold through the flour, cornflour and salt. Pour the batter into the prepared tin, and cover with a tented piece of tin foil. Bake for 45 minutes, remove the foil and bake for another 15 minutes until the sponge is golden, risen and, when pressed gently with a finger, springs back. Leave to cool
Trim the edges, cut the sponge into twenty-five cubes and freeze for two hours
Heat the milk, sugar, cocoa powder, golden syrup and salt together until the sugar dissolves and it’s just starting to simmer. Pour this mixture over the dark chocolate and stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is combined. Place the desiccated coconut in a small tray
Spear a cube of sponge on the end of a fork, dunk it in the chocolate mixture and move it around until covered. Drop it off the fork into the coconut and roll it around to coat it. Continue with the other cubes, leaving them to one side on greaseproof paper until the chocolate has set
I bet these are delicious, but I’m getting the feeling that FYCE wants to see me dead.
@luigi vuoto I’ve got you covered, I am become the queen of “won’t kill you and doesn’t totally suck” recipes . . .
@matthewcrawley Any Bundt cake reference is delightful.
Now can we talk about prawns? Are they just big shrimp?
Also who knows about crawfish? I ordered this at a fancy-schmancy restaurant:
Lobster & Crawfish Salad Wrap – pea shoots, lettuce, tomato, sundried tomato wrap.
It was NOT good. It was really, really fishy. I was expecting a more subtle shell fish taste.
@Megmegmcgee, at C’est La Vie.
This topic is discussed in the comments:
@MatthewCrawley – whelp – I obviously didn’t retain your kind explanation from last time.
I love the FYCE feature (obviously) and one of my hobbies is obsessively revisiting past contributions. If I ever have to go through an extended convalescence again I have half a mind to go through every entry and formalize the tags so it could be our very own online Larousse Gastronomique.
That would be much appreciated!
When DeadSplinter first came into being, weren’t there tabs along the top for the different publications? (…maybe there still are if your using a computer. I wouldn’t know as I’m always on my phone.) I vote for that layout to return.
I wasn’t here for the birth of Deadsplinter, I was over on GroupThink, but eventually I found it when GroupThink was forced out of commission. When you contribute a post you are supposed to classify it, FYCE, DOT, NOT, etc., so while there are no tabs it’s possible to search by topic. I think it’s probably also possible to search by author, but I’ve never done that.
I’ve enjoyed some good crawfish etoufee and some great crab cakes that were made with crawfish instead of crab (perdido – that was at Boogaloo) although I was also pretty drunk for those crawfish cakes.
But I can’t imagine being like hell yeah I’m going to bulk up this lobster roll thing with crawfish. Why not just use shrimpies????
I think it’s a violation of Euclidean geometry to get cubes out of a bundt cake. Some people would argue that no good whatsoever comes out of a bundt cake.
And those people would be wrong. I am a huge fan of buildings that sit at diagonal corners, like the Flatiron Building or the Dupont Circle Building in DC. Wedges from a Bundt cake are their culinary equivalents.
These look delicious! Out of laziness, I would probably just by the sponge cake to start. Or maybe a pound cake if the grocery store didn’t have sponge cakes.