With Australia Day – a day I don’t really celebrate on the date, but usually a day or so before alongside my late nanna’s birthday – I thought I’d tackle something which has bugged me for a number of years, the humble Lamington.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made gluten free lamingtons successfully in the past, and I’ve tried experimenting with vegan lamingtons as well (they’re currently in the freezer to see if defrosting will relieve them of their rubberiness, so apologies to the vegans, no great recipe for you… yet). But trying to nail the custard-filled fluffy sponges has proven a challenge. This recipe takes a couple of days and a bit of patience, but it isn’t all that difficult to make really fluffy gluten and dairy free sponge. Normally I’d tweak a Women’s Weekly featherlight sponge cake recipe to make the sponge, but it is a hit and miss affair at the best of times, especially with being unable to source good quality gluten and dairy free custard powder (I used to use Birds Custard Powder from the UK, but my coeliac friends, while the ingredients are gluten free, it is prone to contamination during production).

So, this Christmas that has just passed saw me making a tweaked version of Nigella’s Christmas Morning Muffins for my parents, which turned out ultra light, fluffy, and tasty that we were all amazed (plus a little measuring accident on my behalf gave me a breakthrough). What if I tweaked the muffin recipe to make the sponge for the lamingtons? How would that work?

Then I remembered my one-off purchase of a square muffin tin (it appealed to me years ago, can’t remember why) which would be perfect to cook these muffin lamingtons, or muffingtons if you will. (Don’t worry, I won’t use that word ever again.) I tweaked further Nigella’s recipe and created these beauties which I then cooled in the freezer in order to be able to cut the tops off and slice the bases in two.

When I started making these lamingtons, I was adamant I was not doing something to celebrate January 26 as Australia Day. So, I didn’t want a typical lamington, either. I flavoured the whole batter with cocoa. I piped a layer of passionfruit macadamia crème patissiere in the middle, finishing the outside with a coating of matcha white chocolate icing flecked in green-hued coconut. Still, the concept is there and the flavour is so totally there, and that fluffy texture! Oh yes! It’s there.

So this recipe, while a special Australia Day treat, contains some sugar. In tweaking the recipes I have reduced the refined sugar content, but please feel free to totally sub it out with a natural sweetener of your choice, or use fresh/frozen fruit or even juice to flavour your sponge – just remember to adjust for the extra liquid you are putting in when doing this.

I will be adding a recipe for gluten and dairy free crème patissiere at a later date – you’ll need to look out for this one as I tell you, this custard filling is so velvety smooth with a wonderful mouth-feel, that no-one will believe you when you say it’s dairy-free. For these lamingtons, I basically just added fresh passionfruit juice from 5 ripe passionfruit, and topped up the total with guava nectar to make 500ml. I added it to the cooled crème patissiere and whisked it in thoroughly before putting it in the refrigerator to set fully.

In the meantime, feel free to do a filling-less version, or use a layer of your favourite raspberry jam to join the two halves.

Gluten and Dairy Free Lamingtons

Ingredients

• 250g  plain gluten-free flour (White Wings is good here)
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarb soda
• 60g  caster sugar or equivalent substitute
• 1 Tbs cocoa powder
• 75 ml guava nectar/ orange juice
• 75 ml coconut yoghurt
• 125 ml dairy-free milk (I used almond milk)
• 1 egg

For the coating:

• 2 1/2 cups icing sugar
• 1/4 tsp matcha powder
• 1 Tbs dairy free spread or coconut oil (I used cocoa butter for a decadent flavour)
• 1/4-1/2 cup boiling water

For filling:
Fill with your choice of raspberry jam, whipped dairy-free cream, or my passionfruit macadamia crème patissiere (recipe to come)

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 200 C/180 C fan-forced. Grease and flour the square muffin tin.
2. In a bowl, add the flour, baking powder, bicarb, cocoa powder and sugar/sub and stir with a whisk to mix the ingredients together.
3. Take your milk in a measuring jug and add the coconut yoghurt, stirring to make a thicker consistency. Add in the guava nectar/orange juice and stir.
4. Add the egg and beat lightly before pouring this mixture into the dry ingredients, stirring just enough to combine all ingredients together.
5. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin and bake for about 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye out that they don’t start burning so check at 15 minutes and give extra time as needed.
6. Remove tray from oven and prise the cakes gently with a fork to release them from being stuck to the pan before allowing them cool in the pan for 10 minutes, after which you can transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. I then pop these cakes into a freezer-proof container and pop them in the fridge to firm them up – usually an hour or two should do it. Then remove them, cut off the risen tops for use elsewhere or for munching on while you continue with the rest of the recipe.
7. Slice cakes in half (lengthwise or not, depending in how you wish to style your lamingtons and how patient you are with cutting them) before popping them back in their container and into the freezer to rest overnight. I actually had my crème patissiere ready to go at this point so I piped the crème on half of the cakes and sandwiched them with the other half before freezing. If using cream, complete this step after coating the cakes with icing and coconut.
8. To make the icing, sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a heatproof bowl. Add the softened spread and stir to mix. Add the hot water one tablespoon at a time and mix well after each addition checking for consistency – be careful not to add too much water. The heat should help melt the spread, allow the icing to form more readily and it should also remove any lumps that may have escaped sifting.
9. When ready to ice your lamingtons, remove them from the freezer, have your icing ready in a bowl next to them, and next to that bowl, have another bowl in which you have placed your stirred coconut and matcha powder – a green-tinged mixture looking decidedly like the Aussie bush, or a front lawn of grass in the throes of drying out in summer.
10. My less-mess-less-fuss method of icing the cakes involves two forks and two teaspoons. Use one fork to gently pick up a cake (or the sandwiched cake layers) and lower it into the icing mixture where you have one teaspoon ready to spoon over the greenish goodness to completely coat the cake; then use the other fork to lift it out of the icing and drop it into the coconut where the other teaspoon is waiting to coat it in the summer grass–like coconut/matcha mixture. You can then gently use the fork to lift the coated cake and transfer it to a waiting cake rack (have some aluminium foil underneath to catch any drips or rampant coconut flakes). And repeat. For each of the cakes. This is when I wish I had a little assembly line of workers to help do this as for one person it gets rather tedious, but could be made fun with a few helpers.
11. If you didn’t use the crème prior to freezing, you can wait for the cakes to dry, pipe a layer of the crème, or indeed some whipped cream (almond or macadamia cream would be best, but if you can tolerate dairy, good for you) and assemble your sandwiched lamingtons. This made 12 assembled lamingtons for me. You could always have some misshapen ones if you didn’t want to use the tops elsewhere – I took a guilty pleasure of spreading my passionfruit crème patissiere on them and ate them as I went! They can be stored in a container in the fridge for a few days, but be aware that the fluffiness tends to dry out of them the longer they are left.