Three weeks into my 52 week challenge and already I find myself behind! That’s what happens when you try to juggle a full time job with a three hour daily commute, a Northampton Saints rugby season ticket, a love of travel and a resemblance of a social life!! Heaven knows what will happen when I embark on my three week holiday to Peru later in the year. Maybe I can add pisco flavour cupcakes to my list!!
And so to the baking. Lamingtons seemed fairly straightforward. I baked my usual Hummingbird Bakery vanilla sponge cake (need to amend this recipe in future as I do find it too buttery when I use Lurpak spreadable). Once the square cake had cooled I divided it into equal squares. I must confess the day I made lamingtons I had my parents around so had made a full roast dinner and apple and blackberry crumble and it was gone 9pm when I eventually came to decorate my lamingtons so I wouldn’t say the squares were of equal size. The Country Women’s Association (CWA) in Australia state they should be 5cm but this differs.
Now comes the messy part. In researching recipes for lamingtons I found Donna Hay’s recipe the simplest to follow. A mixture of icing (confectioner’s) sugar, cocoa powder, melted butter and boiling water. I probably added 50-100ml more water as my icing was too thick to the coat the cake squares but this was then a bit too runny. I enrolled my boyfriend in a simple production line. He dips a cake square in chocolate whilst I prepare another cake square. He then gives me the chocolate coated cake square and takes the un-coated square to dip in the chocolate whilst I dip the chocolate coated cake square in dessicated coconut before transferring to a wire rack to dry. End result was a kitchen surface (and me) coated in chocolate and coconut!!! oh and 20 or so lamingtons to take to the office. Unfortunately this tale has an unhappy ending as due to the bad weather and snow we had down in Sussex I never made it into Brighton and instead worked from my boyfriend’s office who were happy to benefit from Brighton’s loss.
Wow those Lamingtons look amazing. we are going to give them a go this weekend with a production line of me, daughter & hubbie – can predict lots of mess!! Wil let you know how we got on.