I love a good lamingtons. Lamingtons was the first thing I learnt to make. I learnt to make them around about the same time, congregation members were passing on. Meaning that whenever my mother went to sympathize, she went with a tray of chocolate lamingtons, I am sure by the 10^th funeral house, people were sick and tired of lamingtons.

Whenever I come across a recipe for lamingtons, I have to try it out, I don’t know why, but the thought of breaking open a chocolate soak sponge that is covered in coconut and neatly cut into a triangle or square, is just mouth-watering.

I have come across a few recipes, but I have loved only the humble original one.

This past week, I just had about enough, enough of everything. Every time I get a notification, it’s these annoying whatsapp groups with someone complaining about something, why oh why can people not just be happy and not complain about everything. Even people in general, I just say hello and they open their mouths and just vomit negativity. Yes I am well aware that we are in a pandemic and that we will suffer from the after effects on our economy long after the pandemic, but that does not mean every word out of mouths needs to be doom and gloom and negativity. I have encountered so many people that while I am going out of my way to help them with their problems, are throwing my kindness back at me. One customer, who couldn’t get his way around me, told me to go hang myself from the roof and then drove off in a huff and puff and although I did not take it personally because when you work in retail, you learn to have a thick skin and not let things affect you, but those were harsh words, swearing I can handle, but to tell me something like that, when he doesn’t even know me, wow, what is the world becoming? If you can’t be grateful for anything, then at least be grateful that you were one of the lucky ones that had the privilege to open your eyes this morning.

With all these outside interference, I just lost the want to want to cook and bake and create some sort of magic in the kitchen. That rut, is so easy to fall into and get stuck in, but because my parents don’t believe in staying in a rut for too long, they kept nagging and nagging for food to be made and cake to be baked.

Seeing as they wanted cake and I wanted to make a recipe that didn’t require me to think, to read a long recipe and also to go out into the big bad world to get some groceries, I settled on making lamingtons and then I remembered I had come across a recipe from Landi Govender and I thought why not give it a try, because I would be using the recipe as a base to work from.

The reason, I used it as a base to which to work from, was because the original recipe contained eggs, which I don’t use to bake with, so I used my own eggless sponge cake recipe and altered the recipe to incorporate the coffee granules. Easy as 1,2 ,3 . No need to pull out a few hairs trying to convert an egg recipe to eggless one.

The verdict, it was a tad bit sweet for my parents liking, I wasn’t that phased, I like sweet things for some or other reason, once I had put it in the fridge to keep for the next day, it got soggy, the condense milk had seemed to be have also become a little wetter in the fridge, not sure if that is the correct word I am using to describe it, but my fingers were sticky after devouring a square.

Would I make it again, why yes of course, maybe I will add a dash of cocoa powder to the condense milk to tint it as the sponge was white, the condense was white and the coconut was white, so looking at the lamington, it wouldn’t stand out and it didn’t look that eye catching, but as one always says, do not judge a book by its cover, because it tasted delicious.

Ingredients:

• 2 x cups cake flour.
• 1 x cup castor sugar.
• ½ x cup cooking oil.
• 1 x tsp vanilla essence.
• 1 x tbsp. instant coffee granules.
• 1 x tbsp. vinegar.
• 1 x cup boiling water.
• 1 x tsp bicarbonate of soda.

Method:

• Mix the cake flour and bicarbonate of soda together in a bowl.
• In another bowl, mix the water and coffee together, then add in the sugar, oil and vanilla essence, mix till all the sugar has been dissolved.
• Pour the water mixture into the flour mixture.
• Whisk until the mixture is smooth and lump free.
• Pour into a greased square pan and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 20 – 25 minutes or until the cake tester comes out clean.
• Allow to cool before cutting into squares.

• For the coating, pour a tin of condense milk into a bowl and add some desiccated coconut into another bowl.
• Dip the cut squares in the condense milk, shake off the excess and then roll into the coconut, making sure that the entire square is covered in coconut.
• Place back on the cooling rack for about 2 hours to allow the lamingtons to set, before sitting back and enjoying a square with a nice cup of hot coffee.