Eggless Chocolate Lamingtons

          Lamingtons - Australian dessert, this was the challenge chosen for the Eggless Baking Group, this month. It could either be the chocolate version or the lemon version, as my daughter loves chocolate, I chose the former. After coming to India, I 've started using the convection oven for baking, still in the process of learning, in fact this is my first proper bake. And about these lamingtons, they came out absolutely gorgeous, thanks Gayathri for choosing it, this is my version, if you love chocolate (if not too, my niece who is not a big fan of chocolate desserts liked this), then this is for you..

Need To Have
For The Cake

• All Purpose Flour Or Maida - 1 cup
• Condensed Milk - 1/2 cup
• Butter - 2 tablespoons
• Oil - 2 tablespoons
• Baking Powder - 1 +1/4 teaspoon
• Baking Soda - 1/2 teaspoon
• Vanilla Essence - 1 teaspoon
• Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
• Water - 2 + 1/2 oz

For The Icing

• Nutella - 3 tablespoons
• Milk - 3 tablespoons
• Cocoa Powder - 3 tablespoons
• Castor (Powdered) Sugar - 8 tablespoons
• Melted Butter - 1 tablespoon
• Grated Coconut - 1 cup

Method
          Sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Beat the melted butter, condensed milk, oil, vanilla essence, water and salt. To this add the sifted dry ingredients, mix well, pour into a greased pan, I used a square pan. Bake at 200C (390F) for 10 minutes, then reduce to 150C (300F) for another 10 minutes. Cool and remove it from the pan. You can either slice the cake horizontally into two or cut it into half and place one half on top of the other with icing in between, I did the latter.

          For the icing, beat everything together, it may not be as stiff as the regular icing, apply it between the cake layers and cut it into small cake pieces. Now add a tablespoon of warm water to the icing and mix it well. Then take each piece of the cake, dip it in the icing, coating on all sides, roll it in the coconut and keep, repeat for all the pieces. You can eat it as such or leave it in the fridge for a slightly stiffer cake.
Final Verdict : Absolutely delicious, would be doing this again and again.

Note
Oven timings vary, you can do your own version of the basic sponge cake and follow the rest of the steps.
I ran out of regular chocolate, so I used Nutella ( no regrets on that, I love Nutella).
Refrigerate the leftover pieces (it contains coconut), just leave them out for sometime before serving.
I used fresh coconut for rolling the cake, you can use the dry dessicated coconut too.
If you want a stiffer icing add some corn starch powder.