The life lessons of making lamingtons

A confession: I don’t like being messy. I think this is something of a failing in a home baker, but I can’t deny it. I can’t stand dough on my hands. I don’t like getting buttercream on myself when I ice a cake. I love arancini, but my God, the mess! I might as well breadcrumb my own hands. It’s not that I’m a neat freak (I wish), I just don’t like being sticky. So in some ways, lamingtons are my worst nightmare. Because, as I have learned, there is no way of making these cakes without getting a bit messy.

Lamingtons, the (unofficial) national cake of Australia, are little cubes of sponge cake coated in a thin chocolate sauce and tossed in desiccated coconut until they look like shag cushions. The individual elements are unexceptional, but bringing them together makes something distinctive and special.

They were invented at the beginning of the 20th century, and named after Lord Lamington, the Governor of Queensland at the time, or possibly his wife, Lady Lamington. Legend has it that their chef, Armand Galland, was called upon to produce a pudding for guests at short notice, so he chopped up a cake, slung the pieces in a chocolate mixture and dusted them with coconut. It was a hit. So beloved is it that a few years ago, it was the subject of a terribly droll April Fool’s joke, where it was claimed that the lamington was in fact invented in New Zealand and should properly be called a ‘Wellington’.

Today, you’ll often find them filled with jam or sandwiched with cream. Ottolenghi chef Helen Goh fills her giant lamington cake with marmalade, which I love the sound of, but I’m a sucker for anything with marmalade, while Natalie Paull of the erstwhile Beatrix bakery in Melbourne ingeniously sandwiched hers with ‘banana schmutz’ (she called them ‘bananingtons’).