Lamingtons, these Australian miniature cakes have me completely smitten this time. Small genoise cubes dipped in chocolate icing and covered with snow-appearing shredded coconut. These mini bites are quite adorable, so much so that I like to call them the petits fours.
Their small size makes them perfect for a tea time snack. Plus, you can enjoy their choco-latey flavor without worrying much about the calorie intake. And the nutty flavor of coconut wedded with bitterness of dark chocolate is totally divine. It reminds me of those small Bounty bars, having oodles of sweet syrupy moist coconut trapped inside a milk chocolate.
In order to mimic the same moist texture, I thought of using a recipe from The Cake Bible, which I recently bought. And fortunately, this one is the first recipe {of a genoise/biscuit}, from this book which I have tried. Rose Beranbaum’s small tips and tricks helped a lot in achieving that extra bit of moistness. And why shouldn’t it be, after all those wonderful and important tips are from the veteran herself.
I iced them with the chocolate icing made of bittersweet chocolate and the cocoa powder. Cocoa added to chocolate perked the flavor of icing. And for the coconut, I went an extra mile and do the job of peeling the hard coconut and shredding it’s tender white flesh {got my finger hurt while doing that}. But trust me, store brought desiccated coconut wouldn’t have done that job, which the fresh one did. And that effort paid off well.
Genoise/Sponge Cake:
6 large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 cup (150 g) sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cup (175 g) cake flour {i substituted this with 1 cup plain flour and 1/3 cup corn starch}
70 g melted clarified butter, at room temperature
Chocolate Icing:
170 g bittersweet chocolate, chopped
40 g unsalted butter
3/4 cup milk
2 cups icing sugar
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
2 tbsp boiling water
200 g unsweetened shredded coconut
Instructions
- For the genoise, butter and line a 9 inch square pan with parchment paper and keep aside {i used two 9 x 3 inch loaf pans instead}.
- In a clean bowl, beat eggs with sugar at high speed for 10 minutes, till you get a ribbon like texture. {I did this by hand wire whisk}.
- Add vanilla and mix well.
- Using a fine mesh strainer, sieve the flour and corn starch over the egg mixture and mix well, without beating too much and taking care not to over mix. Otherwise all the air entrapped will be lost.
- Scrape the mix into the pan and bake in preheated oven at 180 degree Celsius for 30 minutes or until the sponge pulls away from the sides of the pan.
- Take the cake out of oven and after 10 minutes take that out of the pan and let cool completely on a wire rack.
- For the icing, mix the chocolate, milk and butter in a bowl and heat in microwave till the chocolate gets dissolved.
- Sift in the cocoa powder and icing sugar and mix well.
- Cut the sponge carefully into two halves horizontally.
- Apply the chocolate icing over one half and sandwich the other half and cut into 16 small cubes.
- Add the boiling water to the remaining icing and mix well.
- Carefully holding the cakes, dip them into the icing and then roll all the surfaces over shredded coconut, taking one at a time. Let them stand on a wire rack for some time till the icing firms up.