Lamingtons

About

A lamington is a square of sponge (sometimes day-old, which is better) dipped in a thin cocoa icing and rolled in desiccated coconut. A jam-and-cream split is a party version. The icing should set to a shell, not drip off like a failed ganache. They freeze. They travel. They start arguments about who invented them. Bake a plain sponge, then let it go slightly stale so it will not collapse in the icing. Cut into squares. Mix a thin cocoa icing that is more glaze than ganache — cocoa, icing sugar, a little butter and hot water or milk — and dunk quickly so the crumb coats without soaking to mush. Roll in desiccated coconut at once. Set on a rack until the shell dries. A split with jam and cream is a party version, not required. They freeze well, which is why fêtes rely on them. If the icing drips off, it is too thin or the cake is too warm. If it tears the sponge, the cake is too fresh. Eat with tea.

Substitutions

• Home sponge → A plain madeira loaf

  The weekday cheat. Still dip and roll.

Tips

• Stale sponge dips cleaner than fresh crumbly sponge.
• A jam split before dipping is the filled lamington.

History & culture

School fêtes, CWA stalls, and the supermarket plastic tray. New Zealand also claims them. Eat one with tea. They travel, they freeze, they sell for fundraisers. New Zealand also claims them, which is a reliable way to start an argument across the Tasman. Coconut on the outside is the tell; a naked chocolate sponge is not a lamington. Home bakers still feel obliged to produce a tray for a plate at a meeting. They are not elegant. They are sociable. Eat one with tea, not with an espresso performance. Packet mixes exist; from-scratch sponge still tastes like a house. Children roll the coconut and consider that cooking. Fundraisers price them by the square because they portion cleanly and survive a car trip. Australians abroad get sentimental about the coconut shed on the plate. They are also slightly ridiculous, which is part of the affection. Serve on a plain plate. A dusting of extra coconut hides a ragged edge, which fête cooks already know.

Named, in the usual story, for Lord Lamington, a Queensland governor. The coconut-and-chocolate sponge is late 19th / early 20th century Australian baking. The usual story names Lord Lamington, a Queensland governor, and a resourceful cook coating stale sponge to avoid waste; like many origin tales it is tidier than the archive. What is solid is that coconut-and-chocolate sponge squares belong to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australian baking, when desiccated coconut had become a cheap pantry import and cocoa was everyday. Similar coconut cakes appear in other British-world kitchens; Australia named and kept this one. Commercial bakeries standardised the square. They are not an Indigenous dessert. They are settler baking that became a national cliché and a genuine fête technology. Desiccated coconut as an industrial import from the Pacific and Indian Ocean trades is the pantry fact that made the coating cheap enough to become national. Similar coconut cakes exist in South Africa and elsewhere in the British baking world. Australia kept the name and the fête habit. That is enough origin for a sponge square.

Traditional

Provenance: Editorial adaptation.

Similar dishes

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In this kitchen

• Wheat flour
• Sugar
• Butter
• Egg
• Milk
• Chocolate
• Australia Passport

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