Why don't lamingtons make good secret agents?

Lamingtons in all their guises and Wellington's biggest pastry. What's not to love?

Much excitement in my family group chat this week when my English brother-in-law shared the launch of M&S lamingtons, a supposed first for the UK high street.

It’s hard not to look at them and not hear the sultry voiceover beloved of M&S TV ads: ‘These are not ordinary lamingtons, these are delicate sponge enrobed in luscious chocolate sauce, coated in coconut shavings, crowned with smooth vanilla buttercream and finished with a dollop of tangy raspberry jam’.

Alternatively, as I posted to the chat: ‘THOSE ARE NOT LAMINGTONS!’ (And, honestly, whoever thinks ‘enrobed’ is a good way to describe dipping a chunk of sponge in icing needs to be put on degunging the dishwasher duty until they know better.)

The ‘lamingtons’ in the back of this shot are ‘Caramelised Biscuit Lamingtons’, ‘smothered in chocolate sauce and speckled with spiced speculoos pieces’. Or, as my brother put it: ‘It looks like a lamington with a Shrewsbury biscuit on top. Heresy.’

I feel surprisingly wound up about this because it took me a long time to appreciate the traditional lamington. In fact, it’s probably only really been in the last 20 years that I’ve developed a fondness for the coconut-dusted treat, which dovetails neatly with acquiring a mother-in-law who is a complete pro at making them.

Chocolate lamingtons, made to my MIL’s time-honoured recipe.

Her lamingtons are always chocolate (“never raspberry,” my husband says firmly), wodged together with whipped cream. (Note to M&S: buttercream doesn’t belong in a lamington, no matter how ‘velvety’ it is.) She seems to be able to make them in a flash, without scattering coconut and icing from one end of the house to the other - and when she’s short on time she makes them in advance and sticks them in the freezer. Actually maybe this is how she makes it look so easy, she might have had the ‘ohmygodthereiscoconutandicingeverywhere’ breakdown ahead of time.

Anyway, while I was planning to make today’s newsletter all about lemons, spending the week thinking about both lemons and lamingtons meant I woke up yesterday morning and had an epiphany: I could make lemon ones! Here’s the result.

These are not ordinary lamingtons, these are delicate sponge cubes dipped in very lemony icing and gently rolled in desiccated coconut, then filled with whipped cream and lemon curd. Best of all, with a few tricks up your sleeve (ahem bought sponge and lemon curd) they don’t take all day to make. Here’s how.

Lemony Lamingtons aka Lemingtons

Five useful things to know before embarking on this ‘journey’.

1. Yes, you can make the sponge if you want to, and if that’s your thing, good for you. However, supermarkets, at least New Zealand supermarkets, sell really good ‘trifle sponge’ made in their in-house bakeries that are perfect for this purpose.

2. Lemon curd is pretty easy to make (and I made some yesterday, to this Nicola Galloway recipe) but honestly, this one is really good and probably actually cheaper.

3. Always sift the icing sugar, or you will go made trying to get the lumps out of the icing.

4. A dough scraper is a handy tool to help coating the lamingtons with coconut.

5. Whipped cream is essential. My MIL reckons if you beat the cream until it’s quite stiff, the lamingtons can be filled several hours in advance without any trouble. If you want to stabilise the cream, you can add gelatine to it (this is a trick I learned from Ruth Pretty). Nagi Maehashi has lots of advice on how to do this.

For the lamingtons:

2 Tbsp butter

¼ cup milk

3 cups icing sugar

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 x trifle sponge, each slab cut into six pieces

Around 2 1/2 cups desiccated coconut

For the filling:

250ml cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp icing sugar

1/4 cup lemon curd

Put the butter and milk in a medium pot set over low heat. Stir until the butter melts, then remove from the heat. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then sift in the icing sugar. Add the lemon juice and stir until smooth. The icing should be very runny.

This is a messy job made easier by having one hand managing the icing and one managing the coconut. Put the desiccated coconut into a shallow bowl. Dip each piece of sponge into the icing, then dip into the coconut until it’s evenly coated (be firm, but gentle). Put on a serving plate and store in the fridge or freezer until you’re ready to serve.

Before serving, whip the cream, icing sugar and vanilla to firm peaks (not butter!). Slit each lamington in half, leaving a small hinge (the one in the pic is sliced horizontally but I realised afterwards that it’s better to make this incision vertically - like in the photo of the chocolate lamingtons above - so the cream has a better chance of staying in when you eat them). Spread one cut edge with a little lemon curd, then pipe or spoon in the cream. Decorate with a little blob of extra lemon curd.

Got leftover icing or coconut? Bung them both in separate lidded containers and pop them in the freezer until next time.

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Good Things

What that pyramid in Civic Square is about

After I shared this photo a couple of weeks ago I realised that I’d made a terrible virtue of my ignorance about the pyramid-like structure at the juncture of the City to Sea Bridge and Civic Square. It turns out that it’s Te Aho a Maui, a Rewi Thompson sculpture that represents Te Waipounamu (the South Island). You can learn more about it here. (Thank you

Mary Curry

for the prompt!)

The monster pain au choc

This might not be the finest pain au chocolat I’ve ever eaten, but it’s certainly the biggest (in my defence, it took two of us two days to polish it off). If you’ve ever seen the giant pastries at Wellington City New World and thought, ‘should I?’, prepare to be pleasantly surprised (they could do with better chocolate though).

Oh, and as to why lamingtons don’t make good secret agents? I guess it’s because they crumble under pressure (boom boom!)

Next week on Fancy Butter… MORE good things to do with lemons.