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My fascination with tea time treats continues and this time it’s taken me to Australia for Lamingtons. This traditional aussie dessert consists of two layers of butter cake filled with jam and glazed with chocolate icing and coconut. As simple as it may be, when one is made with care and great ingredients, Lamington can be quite delicious. Since I have more marmalades than I know what to do with, putting a citrus spin is a logical choice. My Lamingtons are made with a orange-scented buttermilk cake with blood orange marmalade filling. Each little cube is enrobed in Grand Marnier chocolate icing and shredded coconut.
My original plan was to search for a reliable recipe and go from there. Naturally, I arrived at the trusty Martha Stewart recipe. However, the recipe needs two 9x13 pans and I am one short. No harm in cobbling my Lamingtons together with a few recipes from different sources.
For the cake, I started with Favourite Buttermilk Cake from Flo Braker’s Baking For All Occasions. This cake yields a pliable tender cake with tight crumb, exactly what I want. It is a versatile cake that plays well with many different flavours. The recipe is written for 8” square cake 2” tall. I would much rather make a single layer under 1” using half sheet pan. I got to work with my calculator to scale up this recipe. To reinforce the blood orange flavour, I rubbed orange zest into the sugar. Braker’s recipe uses the classic mixing method of creaming butter before adding dry and wet ingredient in alternating order. I have never been a fan of this method because it always seems fussy and unreliable to me. Instead, I employed the two-stage method that Rose Levy Beranbaum championed in The Cake Bible. I love how this mixing method yields such tender result every single time with little concern for over mixing.
The icing was a scaled down version of Martha Stewart’s recipe which I enhanced with Grand Marnier. I have always been wary of dipping and enrobing because controlling the consistency can be so fickle. Too cold and the coating ends up being too thick and uneven. Too hot and it may melt whatever it is that I’m dipping. However, this one is a keeper! It’s quite possibly the easiest one that I’ve worked with in a long time. The glaze clings onto the cubes of cake in just the right even thickness. It dries quickly too! The coating of unsweetened coconut adds a bit of crunch to complement the moist cake inside. The glaze actually acts as a nice barrier to prevent the cake from drying out so the Lamingtons stay fresh up to three days. Who doesn’t like made-ahead cakes for parties or gifting?
Don’t be fooled into thinking these are bite-size treats. I rather like to think they are individual servings similar to cupcakes. They are so incredibly pretty sitting in printed cupcake liners. I served some on a 3-tier platter and others were packaged individually in cellophane bag tied with matching pink satin ribbon. I lowered each cake into the bag with the help of tongs. The packaged cakes are adorable little Valentine’s Day treat as well as party favours. Simply change up the colour scheme for the cupcake liner and ribbon for a completely different look. Baby shower anyone?
Blood Orange Lamingtons
makes 20-24 2” cubes
Ingredients
for the buttermilk cake
- 390g granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoon grated orange zest
- 300g cake flour
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 230g unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 250mL buttermilk
- 4 jumbo eggs (or 4.5 large eggs to measure 230g)
for the chocolate icing
- 690g icing sugar
- 90g cocoa powder
- 190mL whole milk
- 45g unsalted butter
- 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier
for assembly
- 4 tablespoon blood orange marmalade
- 3 cups of unsweetened shredded coconut
Method
- Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 11x17 half sheet pan with parchment paper and grease the sides with butter.
- In the mixing bowl of a stand mixer, rub orange zest into granulated sugar until fragrant and crumbly. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix on low speed for 30 seconds.
- Add butter and a quarter of the buttermilk into the mixer. Mix on medium speed for 3 minutes to aerate the batter and build some structure.
- In a small mixing bowl, stir together the remaining buttermilk and eggs. Add one third to the mixer and mix for 20 seconds to incorporate. Repeat two more times for the rest of the buttermilk mixture. The batter should be smooth and pourable.
- Fill the prepared pan with batter and level with offset spatula. Bake in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes or until the top is golden and cake tester comes out clean. Chill the cake overnight.
- When you’re ready to assemble the cake, start with making the chocolate icing. In a large mixing bowl, sift together icing sugar and cocoa powder. Warm milk and butter in microwave until tepid. Whisk into icing sugar until smooth and homogenous. Whisk in Grand Marnier. Set the mixing bowl of glaze over a pot of simmering water at low heat to keep the glaze fluid.
- Unmould the cake from the half sheet pan and peel away the parchment paper. Cut the cake in half so you have two pieces each measuring 11x8.5. Spread marmalade over one piece of the cake in a thin layer. Stack the two pieces together to make a big cake sandwich.
- Using a long serrated knife, trim the edges of the cake. Cut into 20 to 24 cubes. The yield depends on how much of the edge you trimmed away. The key is to match the size of the cubes to the thickness of the cake sandwich.
- To set up your enrobing station, fill a medium mixing bowl with coconut. Place it close to the pot with the chocolate glaze (i.e. the stove). Set a cooling rack over a half sheet pan. It will be used for drying the enrobed cakes.
- Take one cube of cake sandwich and drop it into the bowl of chocolate glaze. Spoon glaze over the cake until it’s all covered. Fish it out using a chocolate dipping fork or a regular dinner fork and let the excess glaze drip away. Drop the cake into the bowl of coconut and roll it around until all sides are covered with coconut. Use a clean fork to move the cake onto the cooling rack. Repeat until all cubes are enrobed.
- The cake will dry in about 30 minutes. Store in airtight container for up to 3 days.
