Lamingtons Recipe

My friend Rosemary Kitay came over and we made these Lamingtons together. Lamingtons are little rectangles of  moist delicious sponge cake, dipped into a chocolate coating..more like a liquidy chocolate sauce, and then rolled in coconut.

We worked quickly when it came to dipping the cake into the chocolate which was really fun! A bit messy on our hands but well worth the effort!

Rosemary brought this recipe over from a community cookbook she has called The International Goodwill Cookery book from South Africa. Rosemary and her family moved to Edmonton from South Africa 25 years ago and I have been enjoying her recipes from her South African home ever since! I just looked up the history of Lamingtons. They were first invented in Queensland New Zealand, according to Google, in the early 1900’s. Have to love a recipe that has survived the test of time!!

These delicious Lamingtons are worth the time & effort!

Here is the recipe

Preheat oven to 300F

Ingredients
Cake Ingredients

125g butter, softened *** 1/2 cup of butter if you do not have a scale ***to make this non-dairy use a vegan margarine (Becel has one)

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup milk ***to make non dairy use soy milk or almond milk

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

pinch of salt

Chocolate Coating

1 1/4 cups boiling water

5 tbsp butter

1 3/4 cups sifted icing sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 tbsp cocoa

Coconut for coating the cake pieces

Method

Grease a 9×9 square pan

1. Cream the butter and sugar together until well combined
2. Add the eggs, mix well
3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk, stir, then add to the mixture
4. Combine the flour, cream of tartar and salt together. Add this to the batter, then mix until combined and the batter is smooth.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan ***Tip from the recipe is to hollow the centre of the batter a bit to ensure the cake bakes with a level top. Use the back of a spoon to do this.
6. Bake for approximately 20 – 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack
7. While the cake is cooling,  mix the chocolate coating ingredients together in a saucepan. Bring to a boil.
8. You want the chocolate coating to be warm when you use it so it absorbs into the cake well.
9. Put some of the chocolate coating into a bowl that is the right size for dipping your cake pieces into. Just the edges of all the sides are dipped so the dish has to be deep enough for that .We used a soup bowl.*** only use a small bit of the coating at a time, reserving the rest …in case it gets crumbs in it! Once you have used the small amount, add more to your bowl. If it is full of crumbs, just try to take them out or discard and put more of the chocolate coating in the dish
10. Put the coconut into a shallow dish big enough to fit the piece of cake that you will be rolling in coconut
11. Once the cake is cooled, cut into rectangle pieces or square pieces, whichever you prefer. We cut ours into rectangles. ***Each piece should be the same size. Our pieces were approximately 2 inches x 3 inches
12. Remove the cut pieces from the pan and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet so that the pieces are readily assessable once you start
13. Quickly dip each side of the cake into the chocolate coating. Just dip the edges in. Then coat in the coconut. ***Be careful because the chocolate coating should be quite warm when you are dipping the cake into it. This allows it to absorb into the cake
14. Put the pieces back onto the parchment lined cookie sheet to cool completely

Enjoy!