Lamingtons

[Adam Balic]

Happy Australia Day. For the occasion I made Lamingtons. Enjoy.

Chocolate:

And the more rare Strawberry.

[PCL]

Groovy man.

Didn't know you could get ingredients for much on Hoth.

May the Force be with You.

[bocconcini]

Hello,

I'm wondering if people think lamingtons are in danger of dying out. Certainly in Sydney and Melbourne city cafes you're more likely to find a friand than a lamington to go with your cafe latte - but I'm curious about the lamington's status in the country and in people's homes.

If anyone knows of any good Lamington sources/festivals etc - I'd love to know. I have the usual history suspects - Michael Symons and Richard Beckett - and I have heard there was a festival in Stawell, Victoria but am unsure if it still goes on.

Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts - i am researching an article for AAP.

cheers,

Tania

[Gifted Gourmet]

This article taught me a bit about lamingtons ..right here but much of it is done humorously so it is a bit confusing ..

AND NOW, SCOTLAND LAYS CLAIM TO THE LAMINGTON....

The article said a group of hungry, travelling sheep shearers were having afternoon tea on an outback property. The property owner’s wife, a Scot from Lamington, made a large sponge cake, cut it in squares and served it with chocolate icing and coconut. The shearers loved it and asked about its name. ‘Oh just a Lamington cake,’ the woman replied. When the shearers were treated to afternoon teas on the other properties they would describe the Lamington cake and ask the women there to bake it.

so is it Australian or Scottish??

[bocconcini]

Thanks for that! The Lord Lamington story is def the one heard most often - and the one Michael Symons refers to in One Continuous Picnic - which is generally regarded as the best history of food in oz even though it was written in 1982. but the more i look, the more scotland and new zealand come up. like the pavlova, australia probably cant even 100 percent claim lamingtons...

[Gifted Gourmet]

Scroll down this page and see how one can make "faux lamingtons" by using Duncan Hines butter cake mix ... not the real thing made of sponge cake! Horrors!

a travesty in playing footloose and fancy free with a recipe

[lamington]

I'm wondering if people think lamingtons are in danger of dying out. Certainly in Sydney and Melbourne city cafes you're more likely to find a friand than a lamington to go with your cafe latte - but I'm curious about the lamington's status in the country and in people's homes.

I really think 'dying out' is exaggerating things. Lamingtons were never, in my experience, the domain of 'cafés', so they haven't disappeared as they perhaps weren't there in the first place. My local shopping strip has about eight bakeries and all of them sell lamingtons. If they vanished from the natural home of the bakery, one could worry.

[Adam Balic]

I wouldn't think that they are in any danger of dying out, as long as there are church/school bakes.

I have made them here in Scotland and the locals have never seen them. Which doesn't mean they didn't originate here, but given they are just cake rolled in chocolate syrup/strawberry jelly and coconut, they could have many origins.

[Tae.Lee]

lamingtons are still pretty prevalent here in SA..

had some over the weekend actually! [homemade though..]

[Wendy DeBord]

Hum...........I make them occasionally. They exist in a couple pastry books and I've seen an article or two in magazines over the past couple years featuring them. I bet theres other American bakers making these if I am.

[Cedreena]

I know a lot of people love them and they are an Australian institution but yuk, all that awful dessicated coconut???

[PCL]

I found myself really annoyed by the very proposition that the immutable lamington might be 'dying out'. As far as memory (and we know how faulty that can be) serves, I'd never been to a cafe (espresso/capuccino serving type) that offered lamingtons, save for bakeries that happen to also serve coffee and provide space for eat-in therefore taking on the dubious moniker of cafe.

Such important icons of our culinary tradition are just not part of the mainstream globalised culture that invokes cafes and the like as cultural barometers. Go into any suburban milkbar, bakeshop, Baker's Delight even, and Acland St in St Kilda herei n Melbourne, and you will find a lamington.

I know of no child in this country, who hasn't tasted a lamington, and it would be rare indeed for one to refuse the offer of a lamington.

[DameD]

lamingtons are still pretty prevalent here in SA..

had some over the weekend actually! [homemade though..]

←

would you happen to have a recipe?? I grew up in Perth and Melbourne ( my mum Aussie) and then spent the rest of my years in Vancouver, Canada (my dad is Canadian).. and just thinking of lamingtons, makes me homesick for Australia. If anyone has a good recipe of would love to make it... makes me think of my after school treat. YUM!!!! what good memories of childhood. I would lvoe my own children to have the love of them too, even though not living down under.

[nakji]

Starbucks in China has started serving lamingtons: not just the classic chocolate, but also green tea and lemon flavours. I can figure out how to make the chocolate kind; a ganache over sponge with coconut sprinkled over. But how to make a lemon or matcha lamington? Ideas?

[Snadra]

Lamingtons are not my favourite treat - probably because I've never had a homemade one...but I have seen them made on television by CWA ladies! Although maybe I should try to shore-up my Aussie credentials by making some this weekend.

I've never seen a ganache used - all the recipes I've seen using a chocolate icing made with cocoa and hotwater (plus varying amounts of milk, sugar and butter), like these: Lamingtons from Taste.com.au; from lifestylefood.com.au; and from Australian Womens' Weekly.

So, I'm thinking for a lemon or matcha lamingtons you would simply replace the thin-ish chocolate icing with one in the flavour of your choice. And maybe a bit of lemon rind in the sponge for a lemon lamington?

Sometimes lamingtons get a jam and cream filling before they are covered in icing and coconut, so you could try a lemon or matcha filling of some description as well.

Now that I think of it, my mother used to make a snack cake that had the same kind of assembly when I was growing up: chocolate cake squares dipped in thin plain icing and coated in crushed cornflakes. Reverse Canadian lamingtons maybe?

Edited because 'cream' is not the same as 'ream'

Edited June 10, 2010 by Snadra (log)