Lamington Macarons

This weekend, I was looking through my pantry to see if I could be inspired to make a batch of macarons. Eventually, I found a bag of shredded coconut buried behind my cans of tomatoes and chipotle chillies and remembered why I had bought it - to make lamington macarons!

Given that half of the visitors to this blog aren't from Australia, if you're wondering what a lamington is, see here. It's essentially a lump of sponge cake sandwiched with jam, rolled in runny chocolate icing and covered with coconut.

Initially, my plan was to just have two chocolate macaron shells dusted with coconut, sandwiched together with chocolate ganache and some strawberry jam hidden in the middle, but my husband wasn't convinced that these would taste like lamingtons.

We came up with idea of adding a small square of sponge in the middle of the macaron, but eventually ended up adding a chunk of lamington in the middle instead.

I'm not convinced the end result taste like lamingtons anyway, but they look a bit like them, and taste delicious regardless!

For the shells, use the generic macaron recipe here. Sprinkle the shells with some coconut before they form a skin (I would recommend letting them rest for a little while first so they firm up a little bit before sprinkling the coconut on).

For the filling, make a milk chocolate ganache (heat 50g cream, pour over 100g of milk chocolate and mix until smooth). Cut a lamington or sponge cake into small cubes, and fill a piping bag with some strawberry jam (to be honest, the cheaper the better - you want that fake strawberry flavour!). To assemble, pipe some ganache onto one shell, make a little hole in the ganache to fit the sponge in, top with some jam, and cover with another shell.