Lamington Layer Cake

The Lamington is a classic Australian Cake.  New Zealand may try to claim the pavlova but there is no doubt about the origin of this delicious cake!  It’s ours New Zealand and you can’t have it!  Normally lamingtons are made in individual serving sizes but I made mine as one large Lamington Layer Cake meant to share.  Because that’s what cake is for right?

On the downlow?  Cake is also about eating it all yourself and not giving any of that sweet deliciousness to anyone else….

So what is a Lamington?

For a plain Lamington, you cut sponge cake into squares, dip the squares in chocolate icing then coat the squares in dessicated coconut.

Simple.  Delicious.

My version sandwiches layers of sponge with strawberry jam and cream for a fancier version.  My mum gave me a jar of the most delicious strawberry jam and I wanted to use it in the Lamington Layer Cake because when I was growing up, our local bakery always had raspberry jam in their lamingtons.  So, me, you can’t have a lammy without jam!

Why Lamington?

The Lamington is named after Charles Wallace Alexander Napier Cochrane-Baillie (otherwise known as the 2nd Baron Lamington).  He  was the Governor of Queensland from 1896-1901.

One day, some totally unexpected guests dropped by Government House.   And horror of horrors!  All they had in the house to serve said guests was some stale sponge cake.

For a start…what kind of arsehole turns up at anyone’s house unannounced?  If you turn up at my house unannounced, you’d be lucky to get stale cake.   I’d pretend I wasn’t home until you went back from whence you came.  Or maybe give you some Beetle Pie to teach you a lesson!

You turn up at the Governor’s unannounced? 

Luckily for history, Governor Lamington had a French chef, Armand Galland, in residence who was less misanthropic than I am.  Galland dipped the stale cake in chocolate and rolled it in coconut.  The guests LOVED it and asked for the recipe.  😍😍😍

Lady Lamington was very impressed and asked Galland to make the cakes for all future official events.  Over time these little cakes came to be called lamingtons.   The first recipe for them was published in 1900 and people have been baking and rolling and dipping ever since!  In 2009, the lamington was officially declared a Queensland icon in 2009. 

Lord Lamington? Not a fan, describing them as “those bloody poofy woolly biscuits”.  By all accounts though, he was a total dick who once killed a koala by shooting it out of a tree (whilst on a walk with ecologists to talk about conservation) so who cares what his opinion on anything was. 

If you would like to join those guests in getting a recipe for  Lamington Layer cake, look no further than the link below But don’t forget the jam!

Lamington Layer Cake

Happy Australia Day for those who celebrate it!  Enjoy the long weekend if you’re in Australia and try to keep out of the heat! Everyone else, have a wonderful week!