Tuesdays with Dorie: Lamingtons from Baking with Dorie

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe comes from Baking with Dorie. Lamingtons are a bake I am very familiar with, having grown up in Australia and they are one of my favourite things to eat, though because they are messy to make, I don’t make/ eat them often.

I’ve written about them before on this site (most recently, here, where I made mini-lamingtons with a surprise jam centre!).

What are lamingtons?

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you will have seen various references to and iterations of lamingtons (including a “how to” piece for Jamie Oliver) – an Australian childhood fixture! The Larousse Gastronomique (2001) defines a lamington as

a small Australian cake, made from a square of sponge cake and coated in chocolate or chocolate icing (frosting) and dipped in desiccated coconut. The cakes were named after Lord Lamington, the governor of Queensland from 1896-1901.

Oxford Dictionaries Online suggests they are

a square of sponge cake dipped in melted chocolate and grated coconut.  [A]pparently from the name of Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland (1895–1901).

For many, the mention of the word might conjure up the vision of “lamington drives” – where lamingtons are sold to raise money for schools, Scouts, or other community organisations.  National Lamington Day is on July 21 every day. In 2006, The National Trust of Queensland named it an Australian “Heritage Icon”. Yes, these humble cakes really are a big deal Down Under.

Who invented the lamington?

Ok so these cakes might be a part of every Australian childhood but for an everyday cake, they have a complex history, especially when it comes to the question of who invented them. As you’ve seen above, it’s generally accepted that they are named for Lord Lamington but there are a few different accounts of how they came to be created. One story has  a maid accidentally dropping sponge cake into melted chocolate and, to avoid food waste and messy fingers when the cake was being eaten, she dipped the cake in coconut – a mistake rescued that apparently, the Lord loved!

Another version insists that the cakes were invented when Lord Lamington had unexpected guests and the cupboard was bare except for a stale sponge cake. The chef improvised and coated the cake in chocolate and rolled it in coconut to disguise its staleness (this actually works and lamingtons are easier to make with slightly stale cake!).  Lord Lamington apparently referred to the cakes as “those bloody poofy woolly biscuits”, but it is said he actually quite enjoyed them and his guests loved them so much they requested the recipe.

When was the first recipe for lamingtons published?

A recipe was published in the Queensland Ladies Home Journal shortly after society ladies had enjoyed these at Lord Lamington’s house under the name ‘Lady Lamington’s Chocolate-Coconut Cake’.  Queensland Country Life published a recipe for “lamington cakes” in December 1900, another early recipe appeared in the Queenslander Magazine in January 1902 and in 1909 Amy Schauer, a cookery teacher at the Brisbane (Central) Technical College included the recipe in The Schauer Australian Cookery Book. So, they definitely have a storied history.

Ok, let’s play around with lamingtons (Dorie says we can!)

Dorie’s recipe uses a genoise cake, made a day in advance as this recipe is a lot easier to make with stale cake (a fresh cake will fall apart more easily when you dip it in the chocolate coating and roll it in the coconut).- check out these process photos for he setup I typically use…

I figured, why not have fun with this one and so with my mini-batch (half the recipe, using only 3 eggs), I did 2 x coconut and 3 each of different coloured sprinkles (I like the round non pareil-type sprinkles but the longer “jimmies” work well here too as they are sturdier <<< affiliate links but I LOVE sprinkles and always have them on hand!).

I’m still moving slowly in the kitchen so this took me a couple of days and way longer than it normally would but I was very pleased with the results!

Voilà: Traditional…

100s and 1000s (what we call “sprinkles” or “nonpareils” in Australia)…

And “jimmies” (aka: Rainbow Sprinkles for Australian readers)

My genoise was a little dense – I think in halving the recipe, I might have misjudged the timing and overbaked a bit but that just made them easier to work with. I *was* going to add sprinkles to the cake but often they end up not being very distinctive and blurring into ugly blobs so I left them out of the batter. Glad I did, I like the cleaner look of these!

Not something I will make often but they are so fun (and delicious) when I do!

Get the recipe for Lamingtons on p 127 of Baking with Dorie or here.

Buy Baking with Dorie and join us baking through the book!

Buy Baking with Dorie on Amazon (this link should bring you to the Amazon store geographically closest to you). For free worldwide shipping, buy it on Blackwell’s. To support your local Indie bookstore, purchase on Bookshop.org.

Then join us over on Tuesdays with Dorie and bake your way through the book!

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Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of “Baking with Dorie” for review purposes. I was not asked to write about the book, nor am I being compensated for doing so. All opinions are 100% my own.

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