Re-Inventing the Lamington 2012 Day Eight: White Chocolate and Rosemary Lamingtons

No Kewpies. An 'All In Good Taste' lamington.

I find that as I get older I become less and less excited about new and unusual sounding flavour combinations, in much the same way that I grow less and less tolerant of cheap bin liners, but the world keeps throwing them out at me regardless.

We do not need mackerel flavoured macarons (scroll down and for God's sake, someone please tell them in Brittany!), foie gras flavoured ice-cream (you know, I love SF, but for this, I hate it) or azuki frappuccino ('Taste the daydream'? Taste the sick more like...). We do not and never have. So why are they being produced then? It is a mystery worthy of Holmes and Watson.

I can say though, no word of a lie, that today's lamington recipe is a thing of great beauty and deliciousness. I know this having eaten one mere moments ago, but can offer further evidence in support of the combination of white chocolate and rosemary, though it is anecdotal since I never posted the cake to which I shall now refer; you must believe me. I implore you.

Last Summer I made an apple and rosemary loaf cake and topped it with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. The one from this cake. And it was killer. We ate the lot. I meant to re-bake it and post it, but life got in the way. I did take something away from the experience though, and that was that my favourite flavour pairing in the cake was not the rosemary and apple, but the rosemary and white chocolate. It just worked.

These lamingtons are a little different to that original cake. Obviously, there's no apple included, but I have also added the herb to the icing (well, coating), rather than the cake. It's quite a lot stronger this way (and rather surprising as well, because you can't actually see the flecks of rosemary in there; the coconut obscures them), but I like it like this. I can't claim that it was on purpose mind you. I actually forgot to add the little pile of rosemary I had chopped in readiness to the rich batter that made up the cake component of today's lams. This is what happens when you have only two days to Re-Invent and 10 lamington recipes to come up with - you turn into a sieve-for-brain-nincompoop.

I'd like to draw attention to the lovely flowers my rosemary bush was covered with, which garnish the lamington you see here. Further evidence of global warming? Well, maybe. But pretty at any rate.

White Chocolate and Rosemary Lamingtons

You will need:

175g plain flour
175g soft butter
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp milk

1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary (I don't have any dried stuff, but it would work here, though I'd only use 1 tsp)

500g white chocolate
200g dessicated coconut

1. First, make the butter cake. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin, and pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
   
2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking powder and vanilla together until you have a smooth batter. Scrape this into the prepared cake tin and level out. Bake for 25 minutes or until the cake tests done. That means that when you stick a cocktail stick (or a piece of spaghetti!) into the centre of the cake, it will come out clean, without any uncooked batter clinging to it.
3. Cool the cake in the tin on a wire rack, and when completely cold, turn out and slice into 16 squares.
4. Melt the chocolate, cool slightly and mix in the chopped rosemary. Use this mixture to make your lamingtons: working quickly, dip the cake cubes into the chocolate and immediately roll them in the coconut.
5. They can be laid out on greaseproof paper to dry and set, and if you want to garnish with fresh rosemary flowers, like I did, be sure to put the flower stems into the lamingtons while the chocolate is still fairly liquid. Otherwise it will solidify and you'll find it impossible (read: very difficult) to break through the crisp shell.
   

Re-Invent the Lamington Yourself!