Cooking Catastrophe - Lamenting over Lamingtons

Cooking is not one of my strong points. I can just about manage to chop a tomato for a cheese and tomato sandwhich but even that took three years of food tech. However, considering I'm (hopefully) off to uni in a year and a bit, now is a good time to learn. (That and I need to prove to my mum I will be self sustainable. She keeps suggesting universities for me. 'Over 100 miles away, Mum? Don't you think that's a little close?') So I started with one of my favourite Australian desserts: A lamington.

Just for those of you not in the know, a lamington is like a square of sponge soaked in chocolate and rolled in dessicated coconut. If you've never tried one before GO AND DO SO NOW. With cream :) It looks like this:

(Here's the batch I made [and ate] earlier. Don't they look delicious?)

Today's cooking session was very constructive (if you believe the whole 'learn from your mistakes' thing). Here is a convenient list of lessons learnt:

- Just because you eat a lot of lamingtons does not mean you can make them.
- Even if it only has four steps (cut, roll in chocolate, roll in coconut, eat), it can still be deceptively tricky

 Step 1 - The cutting-If something has to go in the freezer for an hour before you can use it, it's a good idea to put it in an hour before you actually want to start. Not five minutes before.
- Maths really has every day uses. The optimal method of cutting things into eigths (half, half, half). And for find the best surface are to volume ratio (cut it into quarters one way then half down another plane) Could not find a good use for any complex numbers though.

This is roughly the point where I realised 'Oh [grawlix] I forgot to actually prepare my ingredients!!' So:
 Step 0 - Preparing your ingredients

- This is a good thing to do in the hour whilst the cake is chilling. As opposed to playing games.
- Metric really is the way to go. That said, if the ingredients are only listed in imperial, you're going to just have to make do with it.

- Even when you do follow the ingredients list correctly, it isn't the correct value. It's a bit like this in chemistry too, although the problem is more to do with incomplete transfer of substance than it being eaten on its way to the other container. It also doesn't take into account the fact that when sieving cocoa powder, 1/3 goes to the surroundings rather than in the bowl.
- On the topic of sieves, it is a good idea to notice that you need to sieve the sugar before you put it in the bowl.

- One final note on sieves. Tea strainers are not the best alternative to a small sieve.
- Sticking your hand under a stream of water from the kettle is not the best method of seeing if the kettle is still warm (I realised this one before I did fortunately...)

Step 2: Chocolate Dipping and Coconut Rolling  (Yes, I multitasked here!)
- It helps if your nice smooth coating liquid doesn't have huge chunks of sugar/unmelted butter in it.

- Adding more water does not really help this much

- The aim is to coat the sponge with a bit of chocolate. Not to fish it from drowing in a murky puddle of chocolate. Admittedly, this is rather fun.
- If you use the same forks to rescue the sponge and to roll it about in the coconut, expect cross contamination of chocolate/coconut.

- Huge gaps of sponge can be filled by delicately pasting some of the above chocolate contaminated coconut on to it.

- This does not mean it has to be a work of art with you admiring it from all angles and adding a splodge more here and there.

- When you have only a tiny bit of wallpaper-like chocolate paste in the bowl and five more sponge squares to coat, experimentally adding handfuls and pinches of random ingredients does not help.

- Adding more water does not help you gain more mixture. It just makes the chocolate run off the sponge.

Finally, two more important points:

- Cleaning up is really hard (asides from the bowl-licking). Coconut grains get everywhere and the puffs of cocoa and icing sugar settle everywhere like sand from a desert storm. The best solution I found was to subtly push it into the gaps between the benches.

- If you are making the cake for a set purpose, it is a good idea not to eat it all before it has achieved it's purpose. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done...

So there you have it. Expert advice on how not to make Lamingtons :D