Cooee! Mrs. Hudson is back in the kitchen after a brief hiatus and the next adventure up is The Boscombe Valley Mystery. It's a good story about a couple of star-crossed lovers and a wicked blackmailer, but for me, it's the Australian element that really stands out. I’d love to visit that country some day. It looks so beautiful, and I’ve heard it’s calmed down quite a bit since John Turner AKA Black Jack of Ballarat was robbing gold convoys in the early '60's.
It seems fitting that this story’s recipe be a tribute to Australia. It will be based on a famous Aussie treat called the Lamington and named for Jack, who was "on the lam" from justice.
The classic Lamington is a square of vanilla cake dipped in chocolate, rolled in coconut and sometimes layered with berry jam and/or cream. From this basic format, countless variations are possible. What to do for a Boscombe Valley variation? For one thing we'll use passion fruit jam to represent the young lovers. It's a bit runny, so we'll mix it with pineapple jam. This tropical mix will go nicely with the coconut and dark chocolate.
The Lamingtons will be decorated to look like a clue from the story. It was quite a break for Mr. Holmes when he found that discarded cigar in the moss, so the coconut will be tinted a mossy green and topped with a small cookie cigar.
Ingredients:
1 prepared sponge cake or pound cake
Passion fruit and pineapple jam
Chocolate for dipping
Fine coconut flakes tinted green
Cookie “cigars” (see below)
Prepare the decorations.
Tint coconut flakes with food colouring. Fine cut flakes more closely resemble moss and are typically used on traditional lamingtons, but you can use larger ones if you prefer.
Next we need the discarded cigar stump. Mrs. Hudson is kept quite busy running 221 Baker Street, so she doesn’t have a lot of time to work on her trifling monograph “140 snack foods that can be made to resemble tiny tobacco products.” However, she did pop over to a nearby Asian market to see what she could find. We have three candidates in the category of biscuits that could pass as cigars: Pepero (Lotte), Pocky (Glico), and Roly Poly (Haitai). Here's what they looked like when cut, complete with the characteristic crumbs or “ash” they produce.
You can use one of these options, another type, or roll your own. Cut as many cigars as you’ll need from the biscuit of your choice, then set them aside with the coconut moss while you prepare the Lamingtons.
Cut your cake into four equal pieces. Spread jam on two sides and then sandwich them together with the two other pieces. Cut the cake sandwiches into small rectangles or squares.
Now to dip the little sandwiches in chocolate. First set up your work area. Mrs. Hudson has these fancy dipping tools from a chocolate class she was taking, but a regular fork will work, too. You could also spread the melted chocolate on with a knife.
Easy microwave-tempered chocolate: cut your chocolate up into small pieces or use chips. Put the chocolate in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for about 20 seconds at a time, watching carefully to see when about 3/4 of the pieces have melted. Some whole pieces should remain. Remove from the microwave, stir until the rest of the pieces melt and use immediately.
Dip the cakes. The chocolate tends to get less smooth as you go on because each piece dipped will leave a few crumbs behind. They don’t have to look perfect, though, because the coconut will hide any uneven bits.
If you wait for the chocolate to set a bit before rolling it in the coconut, it will be easier to handle. Don’t let it firm up too much, though. It has to remain a little melted for the coconut to stick.
Add the cigars. The picture below shows a lamington adorned with one of each type. To my mind the Roly Poly biscuits looked the most like "an Indian cigar, of the variety which are rolled in Rotterdam," so I used them to finish the rest of the batch.
Serve them on your favourite plate, in the fine company of some Australians, if at all possible.
