However, we are here now. Better late than never, right?
The Cake Challenge:
LAMINGTONS
Just to recap from my last post: each week I'm choosing a cake from this book to create at home. And where else to start, but from the beginning? The first cake of the chapter: Lamingtons. A real 'Aussie' thing. Also plain and easy and yawn - in my opinion at the time.
I was wrong.
For those unaware of what lamingtons are, essentially they are a sponge cake dipped in chocolate icing and covered in coconut. They are fiddly. They are time consuming. They are something I would usually snort "stuff that" at and bake cookies instead. However, the book said I must make these little coconutty jerks, and so I did.
For starters, you need half a dozen eggs. That made me a tiny bit concerned that I would wind up creating chocolate coated quiche, but still I continued. They are beaten for what feels like a bazillion years (10 minutes) and then beaten some more while sugar that is gradually added dissolves. Luckily, we have the mixer these days - prior to my wedding (which was catered for by friends and family) I didn't have any form of electric beaters. I would have been incredibly cranky trying to do this by hand.
Then there was the sifting of the flours (cornflour, self raising flour and plain flour). Now, this apparently is a big deal. The flours wanted sifting three times. THREE TIMES. Who has the time or patience for this wankery? However, I continued.
And then there was the folding. But not too much folding, because a sponge is a precious creature that needs to be light and fluffy. Well. Light and delicate is not my way, and there were lumps and boy did those lumps need to come out.
...which may have been my downfall.
But hey - my cake mix was so bubbly. LOOK AT ALL THE BUBBLES. I had never made a sponge before so this was super odd to me, but I was impressed. BUBBLES.
And into the oven it went.
Oh yeah - this was supposed to be my helper.
And this is me drinking peppermint tea while waiting, and ignoring the massive pile of washing beside me.
The cake seemed to take forever. And I got quite impatient and began to poke it with things to see if it was ready yet. After forty-five minutes or so we had this:
A SPONGE.
Then there was the waiting for it to cool, and the slicing of it into around sixteen pieces. The chocolate icing consisted of three cups of icing sugar (the recipe said four. I said "recipe, ease up. You're a little excessive"), cocoa powder, butter and milk. The pieces of sponge are dipped in the icing mix, and then tossed in desiccated coconut.
This I found infuriating. The chocolate icing went everywhere, the coconut went everywhere, the sponge fell off into the icing, the icing mixed in with the coconut and then some of it just ran off the sponge anyway. FIDDLY.
BAM. LAMINGTONS.
I also didn't have desiccated coconut. I had shredded. Which I was like "hey, it'll look more rustic". My husband, however stated that they looked like "woolly mammoth lamingtons" and so the name has stuck. BEHOLD. MY WOOLLY MAMMOTH LAMINGTONS.
For my first attempt, despite my fury, they didn't turn out too bad at all. The sponge was a little dense - I put this down to a) over enthusiastic mixing and b) the wrong size cake tin, therefore thicker sponge and different cooking time to recipe. The shredded coconut didn't hold on as well as desiccated coconut would, however, I kind of liked it.
Best part of lamingtons - they got even better after a day or two in the cupboard, believe it or not.
So there we have it. My first Cake Challenge was a ragey success.
NEXT TIME: APPLE CUSTARD TEA CAKE
