Lamington

A pale cake is cut into squares and coated in a dark chocolate icing and white coconut. The lamington is a small Australian cake that is cut first and then covered on every side. Unlike a brownie, which is baked chocolate-colored all the way through, its cut faces are also iced. The three elements—a sponge or butter cake combined with icing and desiccated coconut—create its soft interior and the grainy texture of its surface.

Cubes of cake iced and rolled in coconut

A cake baked in a single sheet is cut, each side is dipped in icing, and the pieces are coated in desiccated coconut. The icing adds flavor and also serves to hold the white coconut to the surface. The fibers of the finely shredded coconut combine with the soft texture of the cake, and some versions also have jam or cream sandwiched inside. There is no single rule for whether another layer is added inside.

Pink and brown lamingtons lined up together. Both are coated in coconut on the surface. Photo: Finbar.concaig, 2021-09-18 (as stated on the original page), location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced-size version from the distributing source. Any processing at the time of original publication is unknown; no additional processing for this use.

The raspberry lamingtons presented by Chelsea in New Zealand also have an icing that differs from the chocolate kind. A cake made by creaming butter and sugar and adding eggs, flour and milk is baked, cut into cubes, cooled and frozen for 1 hour. This makes the corners less likely to crumble when the cubes are dipped. They are dipped in a pink icing of raspberry jelly crystals, hot water, butter and icing sugar, then coated in coconut.

Once the icing has set, a slit is cut in the top and filled with cream and jam. This lamington not only has jam inside but is also finished with a surface containing no chocolate, yet it still shares the method of dividing the cake into squares first and then covering the surface.

In Japan, too, shops put their own twists on the cake and filling of their lamingtons. Seiichiro Nishizono, a confectionery shop in Osaka, pairs a sponge made with taihaku sesame oil instead of butter with raspberry jam and chocolate. Grumpy Kitchen in Kobe does not sandwich berries inside, making a version that lets you enjoy the combination of sponge, chocolate and coconut.

Cream-filled lamingtons on display in a Western Australian shop. Coconut is visible on the square cakes on the left. Photographs by Gnangarra…commons.wikimedia.org, 2024-03-07, Midland, Western Australia, Australia. Original image / CC BY 2.5 AU. Reduced-size version from the distributing source. The original image’s Exif data records the use of Lightroom, but the details are unknown. No additional processing for this use.

A cream layer was already present in the 1900 recipe

The December 17, 1900 issue of “Queensland Country Life,” cited by the State Library of Queensland, contains a recipe (the proportions of ingredients and the method) of the same name. In the transcription published by Old Government House, the cake is cut the day after baking, a cream of butter and icing sugar is spread between the pieces, they are stacked into cubes, and the outside is covered with cocoa icing and coconut. Even this early printed example included a method of sandwiching cream inside.

In 1904, a recipe was also printed under the name of cookery educator Amy Schauer. She was head teacher at a cookery school in Brisbane, and at its opening ceremony on May 2, 1900, she gave a cooking demonstration before the Governor’s wife.

An origin story of a cook’s improvisation

One story holds that Armand Galland, Lord Lamington’s cook, finished a cake he had on hand with chocolate and coconut and served it to more afternoon tea guests than expected. Queensland University of Technology, which opens Old Government House to the public, also presents this story and features testimony from his great-grandchild. It is a tale of resourceful hospitality, remaking an already-baked cake by adding a few ingredients.

In another story, from inland Toowoomba, a temporary cook, Fanny Young, was asked to make “snowballs,” small cakes with cream that the Governor liked. Lacking the utensils and ingredients, she reportedly baked a large cake, cut it, covered it with chocolate and coconut and served it instead. Which of the cooks made it first is unclear.

The theory that it originated at the opening of a school in Ipswich has a chronological problem: a printed example from 1900 predates the school’s 1901 opening. A 2014 report claiming that a New Zealand sweet called the “Wellington” came first was an April Fools’ Day fabrication using a fictitious 1888 painting. This story of a New Zealand origin did not convey actual history.

Recipes crossing state lines and changes in the cake

Early printed examples were not limited to Queensland. In the publications examined by food historian Alison Vincent, a method similar to one printed in a 1909 newspaper in Colac, Victoria, also appears in a 1911 cookbook from Adelaide, South Australia. The latter adds melted butter to eggs and sugar, producing a denser cake than methods that cream butter and sugar. As the recipe spread across state lines, the texture of the cake to be iced changed as well.

Lamingtons served with tea. Chocolate and coconut are visible on the surface. Photo: Coastal.culture.vulture, 2016-01-26, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced-size version from the distributing source. The originally published image’s Exif data records Windows Photo Editor, but the edits are unknown. No additional processing for this use.

School fundraising and a South African name

A lamington drive is an initiative that raises funds for schools and other activities by selling lamingtons individually. Warwick East State School in Queensland also lists it among the fundraising of its P&C, an organization of parents and local community members.

Cutting one large cake and covering every side to make small individual pieces also suits handing them out and selling them. Across the ocean in South Africa, similar sweets are also called ystervarkies, Afrikaans for “little porcupines.” The name likens the coconut to white quills; in another land, the sweet is loved under a name inspired by the same surface feature.

Glossary