Lamington (Coconut Chocolate Sponge Squares)

Variations

• Filled with jam and cream: split horizontally and filled with raspberry jam and whipped cream. Commoner in New Zealand and parts of Australia, and made this way they have to be eaten the same day.
• Sponge or butter cake: a genuine argument. A light sponge drinks the icing and stays moist but is hard to handle; the butter cake this recipe uses is firm enough to dip easily and keeps three days. It is built by the same creaming method as pound cake.
• Passionfruit lamingtons: the yellow version, with passionfruit icing instead of chocolate, standard in Australian bakeries. Strawberry, coffee and matcha versions exist too.
• The argument with New Zealand: like the pavlova, this is a contested cake. The usual account traces it to Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland around 1900, while a New Zealand claim has it as a corruption of "Wellington". Exactly the same shape of dispute as pavlova.
• The lamington drive: schools and clubs make and sell them in bulk to raise money, so often that in Australia the phrase is close to a synonym for a charity sale. With meat pie it is one of the two things the country is named for.
• Made from leftovers: a stale pound cake or banana bread cut into cubes works directly — better, in fact, than fresh.
• What to serve with them: tea. They go on the same tray as scones, and are sometimes served with cream the way Eton mess is.

Tips

• Use day-old cake — this is half the recipe. Fresh sponge is wet and loosely set, and it collapses at the corners the instant it meets icing. Left overnight, starch retrogradation firms the crumb enough to survive being dipped on all six faces. It is one of the few recipes where staleness is a requirement rather than a problem (reviving leftovers).
• In a hurry, an hour in the freezer. Wrapped and frozen it reaches the same firmness. It does not need to freeze through — chilled and set on the outside is enough (freezing and thawing).
• The icing has to be thin. You are passing the cake through it, not spreading a glaze. It should run off a spoon while holding the mark for a second. Thicker and the cube gets squashed; thinner and the coconut will not stick.
• Keep the icing warm. It thickens within minutes as it cools. Working with the bowl over hot water is what lets all sixteen come out the same (what sugar does).
• Why boiling water. Icing sugar and cocoa do not dissolve properly in cold liquid and leave grains. Boiling water takes them smooth and starts the icing off warm at the same time.
• Dip for seconds, not longer. Left in, the sponge does what sponge does, gets heavy and slumps. In, turn, out.
• Two forks, or skewers. Done by hand, coconut and icing weld to your fingers and the job becomes impossible around the tenth one. Keeping one hand for dipping and one for rolling also works.
• Coconut immediately. Once the icing starts to dry, coconut rolls straight off. Set the icing bowl and the coconut dish side by side and do one cube at a time.
• Fine coconut, not flakes. Large flakes fall off under their own weight and leave a ragged surface. Desiccated — finely shredded — is the right thing.
• Set them on a rack. On a plate the icing underneath sticks and one face ends up flat. Space them out on a wire rack.
• Unsweetened cocoa. There is already 500g of icing sugar in it; sweetened cocoa leaves you with sweetness and no chocolate.
• Three days in an airtight tin. The coconut shell keeps moisture out better than you would expect. The jam-and-cream version goes in the fridge and gets eaten the same day (serving temperature).