Lamingtons in Saigon: Chasing One Grandmother’s Recipe

The short answer: Lamingtons are an Australian dessert: squares of butter sponge dipped in thin chocolate icing and rolled in desiccated coconut. The lamingtons we bake in Saigon are made from scratch in our District 3 kitchen in Bàn Cờ Ward, from a recipe we reverse-engineered during the 2021 lockdown for a neighbour who missed his grandmother’s.

What makes a proper lamington?

Start with the sponge, because everything else is downstream of it.

A lamington sponge has a contradictory job. It has to be sturdy enough to be picked up, dunked in warm icing, and rolled through a tray of coconut without tearing at the corners. It also has to stay tender enough that you are not chewing. Most versions fail on one side or the other. Too light and it collapses into the icing bowl. Too dense and you have shipped a chocolate brick.

Thu builds ours with real butter, which is not the traditional choice. The classic Australian sponge leans on eggs for lift and skips butter entirely. Butter makes the crumb slightly closer and gives it a richer edge, and it survives a chocolate dip far better. That is an American hand on an Australian bake, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Then the icing.

The icing is the part people get wrong most often. It should be thin, closer to a glaze than a frosting, warm when the sponge goes in. You want it to soak about two millimetres into the outer crumb and stop. That thin soaked layer is what fuses the coconut to the cake so it does not shed all over the counter. Ice it cold and thick and you get a shell that cracks off in one piece the moment someone bites in.

The coconut is desiccated, not shredded and not flaked. Shredded coconut is too long and reads as texture for its own sake. Desiccated gives you the fine sandy coat the bake is actually known for.

Why does an American-style bakery in Saigon make an Australian cake?

Because a neighbour asked, and then would not let it go.

Dulce de Saigon did not begin in a commercial kitchen. It began in our apartment during the strictest stretch of the 2021 Ho Chi Minh City lockdown, when nobody could go anywhere and a lot of people were a long way from home. We started taking requests, mostly from other people in the building. Thu used those requests to teach herself, one bake at a time, and the results became the first version of what is now our recipe book.

One of those requests came from an Australian down the corridor. He wanted lamingtons. He was specific about it. They had to taste like his grandmother’s, and he said so more than once.

How do you reverse-engineer a cake from a memory?

Slowly, and with someone willing to keep tasting.

There was no recipe card. There was a man describing a texture he remembered from a kitchen on the other side of the world, which is a genuinely difficult brief. Thu baked a batch, handed it over the landing, and waited. He came back with notes. The sponge was close but too airy. The chocolate was too sweet, and it needed to read darker.

So she adjusted the density of the sponge and pulled the sugar back in the icing, then did it again. And again. He was a patient tester and an honest one, which is a rarer combination than it sounds.

The batch that landed, he approved without qualification. That is the recipe we still bake.

We make no claim to Australian heritage here. We are an American-style bakery in Vietnam baking one specific family’s version of a national dessert, because a person we knew wanted it and helped us get there. That is a smaller and more honest claim than “authentic”, and it happens to be true.

How is a Dulce lamington different from a supermarket one?

A supermarket lamington is built to survive a shelf. Ours is built to be eaten the day it is cut.

The difference shows up in three places. The sponge is made the same morning, with real butter and no preservatives, so the crumb is still soft rather than set. The chocolate icing is mixed in-house rather than poured from a bucket of coating compound, so it tastes of cocoa instead of vegetable fat. And the coconut goes on while the icing is still warm, which is the only way it actually sticks.

You can tell within a bite. A shelf-stable lamington is dry in the middle and the coconut falls off in your lap. Ours does neither, and it also will not last three days, which is the trade we chose.

How do you order lamingtons in District 3?

We bake them fresh at 382/15 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, Bàn Cờ Ward, open daily 8 AM to 9 PM. They sell in singles or by the tray, and the tray is the right call if you are feeding an office.

For a larger order, or if you want them for an event, message us on Zalo at 0903 305 993 and we will confirm what we can turn around. Trays are made to order, so a day’s notice helps.

If you cannot get to Bàn Cờ, we deliver across Saigon:

• Direct: order.ipos.vn
• Apps: GrabFood and ShopeeFood

Worth knowing: lamingtons are not on the counter every single day. They run in batches. If you want them on a specific date, ask first rather than turning up hopeful.

While you are looking, the cakes we bake to order and the rest of the Dulce menu are both worth a scroll. If you like a bake that leans dense and rich, our millionaires shortbread is the closest neighbour on the menu.

What do customers say about our lamingtons?

Honest answer: nobody has written a Google review that names the lamington specifically. We have hundreds of Google reviews at 4.8★ across the bakery, and not one of them mentions this cake by name.

We could have pulled a general five-star review and floated it under this heading. It would have looked better and told you nothing. The one person whose opinion this recipe was actually built around lived down the corridor, tasted every failed batch, and signed off on the last one.

Frequently asked questions

What is a lamington?

An Australian dessert made of butter sponge cake cut into squares, dipped in thin chocolate icing, and rolled in desiccated coconut. It is usually eaten with tea or coffee and is a fixture at Australian bake sales and fundraisers.

Are Dulce’s lamingtons made with real butter?

Yes. The sponge is made from scratch with real butter, and we do not use margarine or preservatives in it. The chocolate icing is mixed in-house rather than bought as a coating compound.

Do you make lamingtons every day?

They run in batches rather than daily. If you want them on a particular day, message us on Zalo at 0903 305 993 first and we will tell you what is baking.

Can I order a tray of lamingtons for an event?

Yes. Trays are made to order, so give us a day’s notice where you can. Message us on Zalo to confirm current capacity, pickup, and delivery.

Are they an authentic Australian recipe?

They are one Australian family’s recipe, rebuilt from a neighbour’s description and tested against his memory until he approved it. We are an American-style bakery and we do not claim national heritage for the bake.

Find us

Dulce de Saigon · 382/15 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, Bàn Cờ Ward, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City
Open daily 8 AM to 9 PM · 0903 305 993 · 4.8★ on Google

About the author: Garret Nelson is co-founder of Dulce de Saigon. He lived through the 2021 Saigon lockdown that started the bakery, which is when this particular cake got figured out. More at our story.

Explore more from Dulce

• The full Dulce menu
• Cakes baked to order in Saigon
• New York cookies in Saigon
• Millionaires shortbread in Saigon