Australian Lamington

This wonderful little sponge cake is a very common cake in Australia and almost every kid loves it! I personally experienced this cake for the first time the summer 2010 when I was on vacation in Australia to visit relatives and experience the beautiful country.  I think this cake is really good and I’ve have wanted to bake it ever since I got home, so when I finally found a good recipe I was so happy!

 Ingredients: 

2 cups of  flour

2 tsp of baking powder

1/4 tsp of sea salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup of room temperature butter

3/4 cup of sugar

1 tsp of pure vanilla extract/or a tbs of vanilla sugar

1/2 cup of milk

2 cups of icing sugar

1/3 cup of cocoa powder

3 tbs of butter

1/2 cup of milk

Step 1:  Preheat the oven to 180 C

Step 2: butter a square cake tin.

Step 3: Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a big bowl.

Step 4: Cream the butter and sugar with an electric beater in a separate bowl. Mix until the mixture is pale and fluffy.

Step 5: Add the eggs one at a time to the butter/sugar mix, beat well after adding each egg.

Step 6: Add the vanilla extract/ vanilla sugar and mix well.

Step 7: Now use a spatula to add the flour mix and milk in three additions. Start with the flour, then the milk and then finish with the rest of the flour.

Step 8: Spread the batter evenly into the cake tin.

Step 9: put the cake in the oven for 30 min, test if the cake is done with a toothpick and if it comes out dry/clean the cake is done.

Step 10: Let the cake cool down for 5 min in the tin and then invert it onto a wire rack to cool down further.

Step 11: When it's cool cut it into squares depending on what size you want. Then put them in a air-tight container and put them in the fridge for 2 hours or more. 

Step 12: To make the icing measure up the icing sugar, cocoa powder, butter and milk in a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.

Sterp 13: stir the mixture until it's smooth but still a bit thick.

Step 14: Now it's time to coat the cake pieces with the icing. Put a newspaper under the wire rack (to catch the mess) and now place the cake in the icing. Make sure all sides are covered with the icing and then roll it in the desiccated coconut.

Step 15: repeat this with all of the pieces and then store the cakes in a air-tight container in the fridge. They can be stored for max. 5 days.

My ratings of the recipe:

Time: approx. 3 h and 15 min. This is a quite time consuming recipe but it's mostly because of the 2 hours you need to store the cake in the fridge. Otherways it's really fun to make and it's definitely worth the time.

Difficulty: This is not very difficult to make even though it involves a lot of steps. The most tricky part is to coat the Lamingtons with the icing and coconut since it can be very messy. Apart from that the recipe is quite easy and mpst important: fun!

Gourmet vs. everyday: This is more of a "everyday" cake I would say, but it can of course be served at a tea party or other occasion. The taste is very simple but yet tasty and as I mentioned before, kids love it!

In conclusion this recipe gets 5 stars!