It Mayo Shock U - Chocolate and Passion Fruit Lamingtons

I am so glad the home internet is working again... and let's just hope *fingers crossed *touched wood there will be no power shutdown as well today and forever... amen.

For those who don't know, my friend Peter over at Delicious Delicious Delicious blog is back hosting his annual Re-Inventing the Lamington event. It's a lot of fun and there will be a prize to win.  So check out the post here (also the prize you might win) and join in the baking fun!

For my first ever lamington experience, I combine two flavours that go so well together... chocolate and passion fruit. The richness and the sweetness from the chocolate work really well with the sharpness of passion fruit.  Utterly delicious.

The chocolate cake is inspired by and adapted from the brilliant Adriano Zumbo, one of Australia's best known chef.  There's a recipe from his book Zumbo called it mayo shock u, which is a chocolate loaf cake with raspberries.  What fascinates me is the use of Japanese mayonnaise in place of eggs, so I just had to give it a go. The result was... shocking... Not only the cake is super easy to make, but the result cake was incredibly soft and moist too.

You can get Japanese mayonnaise, such as Kewpie at your local Asian grocery store.  Japanese mayonnaise is different than the usual western mayonnaise.  I learn that it has a higher egg ratio and also made with rice vinegar. 

To make it easier to cut and shape into lamingtons, I bake the cake in a square cake/brownie tin.  The passion fruit element for the lamingtons comes from passion fruit curd.  You can make your own if you want to... I just bought a really good one.  Give me a break.

Chocolate and Passion Fruit Lamingtons

For the chocolate cake
145 gr Japanese Mayonnaise
100 gr caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
150 gr plain flour
3 gr baking powder
3 gr baking soda
35 gr unsweetened cocoa powder
140 gr water

Passionfruit Curd
Freshly grated coconut/desiccated coconut

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Line and lightly grease a 18 cm square tin.

To make the chocolate cake, in a mixer bowl (free-standing or hand) add the mayo, sugar and vanilla bean paste and mix for few minutes until the sugar starts to dissolve.

In another bowl, sift the dry ingredients, the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa powder.  Then add this to the sugary mayo on a low speed.

Slowly pour in the water.  Don't panic if the mixture gets a little lumpy... just continue mixing and it'll be fine. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 20-25 minutes.  Let the cake completely cool in the tin.

When the cake is cooled, take it out from the tin, remove the baking paper and cut the cake into 2 x 2 cm square.  Take one square of the cake and add a little dollop of the passion fruit curd then sandwich with another square of cake.  With a pastry brush, brush the cake with more curd on all sides.  Then roll in the coconut.  Continue with the rest.  Thinking about it now, it'll actually be easier if you cut the cake into rectangles, so go do that instead.