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Each week, Good Weekend’s how-to column shares expert advice on how to navigate some of modern life’s big – and small – challenges. This week: How to make a lamington.
Lamingtons are delicious. So delicious that they have their own fan club, the Australian Lamington Appreciation Society (ALAS). But as some of us know from bitter experience, they are tricky to make. Unless you know what you’re doing, it’s easy to end up with chocolate icing splattered across the kitchen, desiccated coconut in your hair and, for your trouble, a plate of lumpen brown objects that look more like landscaping material than afternoon tea.
Pam Chamberlin is here to help. Chamberlin has been making lamingtons for 60 years, regularly entering them in Sydney’s Royal Easter Show. She has won the blue ribbon in the lamington division more often than she can remember, most recently a year ago. Because she plans to retire from competitive cookery soon, she’s willing to divulge a closely held secret and explain exactly how perfect lamingtons are produced.
The first step is obvious. “You bake the cake,” Chamberlin says. “Either sponge or butter cake.” Once it’s cooked – in a square tin – Chamberlin turns it out onto a rack and lets it cool. Next, she cuts it into cubes – “with a large carving knife, not serrated”.
At the Royal Easter Show, judges insist that the sides of the cubes are no longer than 5.5 centimetres. “For normal, everyday lamingtons, I don’t worry about the size,” says Chamberlin, whose next step is the innovation she credits with making her a lamington ace. For a cube of cake to become a lamington, it must be dipped in runny chocolate icing, then rolled in coconut. This is the point where things can turn ugly, because fresh cake is soft and inclined to fall apart.
Chamberlin’s tip for keeping the cubes intact and clean-edged? Place them in a plastic container, she says, lowering her voice, and put them in the freezer for a couple of hours. “Because if you roll them when they’re frozen, they don’t crumble.”
Her other advice: get a friend to help. One person dips the cake in the icing, covering all six sides, then drops it into a plate of coconut. The second person rolls it in the white flakes. Lamington-making is inherently messy – the icing inevitably drips all over the place – but separating the two jobs is a way to minimise the mayhem.
Chamberlin often returns the finished product to the freezer, ensuring she always has lamingtons on hand. “You never know when someone’s going to come for afternoon tea,” she says.
