First published Lamington recipe for Australia's most-famous culinary icon

The now-defunct Sydney Mail may have published for the first time the recipe for the humble Australian lamington.

On Saturday 12 October 1901, the newspaper printed the following article in answer to readers' enquiries:

THE LADIES' PAGE 

Answers to Correspondents.

BY HOUSEWIFE.

Housewife will answer all questions in this column relating to the House, Cookery, Fashions, &c. Rules :— 1. All patterns and plans must bear owner's name and pseudonym, and must be sewn in the letter accompanying them. 2. All letters to have a list of questions, which must be concisely and clearly written at the end, the writer's pseudonym plainly written at the top. 

To make a most delicious cake suitable for afternoon tea I can recommend the following recipe. Lamington cake: Take one cup butter, three cups flour, two cups sugar, five eggs, leaving out the whites of two for icing, one small cup milk, one small teaspoonful carbonate of soda, two small teaspoonsful cream of tartar dissolved in the milk. 

Rub the butter and sugar together; add the eggs and milk with the flour in which the soda has been mixed. Bake for 20 minutes in long flat tins, and when cold cut into small blocks and ice all ever with an icing made as follows: 1/4lb. butter, 1lb. icing sugar, beaten well together. 

Add the whipped whites of the two eggs, with three large tablespoonsful grated chocolate (or cocoa of a dark colour) essence of vanilla to taste. Cover the blocks all over, and immediately roll them in desiccated cocoanut. 

This cake is delicious, and well worth trying.

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The Sydney Mail 12 October 1901

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article165233945