Passionfruit lamingtons

Photographer: Emma

I have made over the humble lamington in this simple recipe.  Once more, I am publishing ‘small food’ and for that you inevitably want maximum flavour.  In my opinion, sponge cake doesn’t quite cut it so I have made a light blondie-brownie as the base.  The catering company I worked for gave me the idea for using brownie; when you are making 10,000 petit fours for the week you really want to be out-sourcing the brownie, but for a small batch such as this, it’s really simple to bake.

Traditionally lamingtons would be served with cream but I think these are perfect on their own.

INGREDIENTS

Blondie brownie
1 cup white chocolate buttons
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup butter
2 eggs
1 ½ cups flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

Passionfruit syrup
230g passionfruit syrup
1 cup boiling water
10g powdered gelatine

Coating
Dessicated coconut (I like to mix in coconut thread)

METHOD


1. Preheat the oven to 170ºC on Bake.
2. Put the white chocolate in the freezer for 15 mins; you want to chill the chocolate to prevent it from melting it in the blender when processing.
3. Line a baking tin with baking paper.
4. Cream the brown sugar and the butter.
5. Beat in the eggs.
6. Blend the chocolate in a food processor. Ideally you want the chocolate as fine as possible but it’s ok to have larger bits (the size of rice grains).
7. Sieve in the flour, baking powder and salt into the sugar/butter/egg mixture. Add the blended chocolate and mix all ingredients until just combined.
8. Pour the mixture into the lined pan and cook for 25 mins or until cooked through (use a toothpick or skewer to check) and golden.
9. Cool the brownie on a wire rack.
10. Boil 1 cup of water and in it, dissolve the gelatine.
11. Add the passionfruit pulp, mix and leave to cool to room temperature.
12. Cut the brownie into squares (approximately 2cm x 2cm), dip into the cool passionfruit mixture and then into a bowl with coconut.

Tips and tricks
The passionfruit mixture will start to solidify as it cools. Thin it down by microwaving it for 20 seconds or so.