Lamington Cupcakes

So over here in Australia, we especially love January 26 because it’s AUSTRALIA DAY! Basically everyone chucks on their thongs, sunnies and bikini’s and either hits up a beach, or has a house party. A few prerequisites though – the day must revolve around Triple J’s Hottest 100,everybody must drink (preferably beer although some are more lenient) and there will generally be some kind of water/childish structure involved (blow up pools, jumping castles etc).  Well that’s the norm anyway. I’m told.

My day did actually follow those lines to an extent. Now I live in a horrible town that has nothing to do. Ever. Weekends are horribly boring. So when a friend said they would throw an Aussie Day party, I was literally jumping with excitement for days prior. 48 hours before said day, Mother Nature decided to flood our town. That's the shop at the end of my street. It was all very exciting/scary. I have been trapped in flood waters before so was nervous, but I naturally get excited over weather events, so it is always a very confusing time for me.

Anyway, long story short, my friend cancelled the party.When the 26^th rolled around, it was a beautiful balmy day with not a drop of water in sight. Shame. Although I still managed to drink too much in a blow up pool, so at least it wasn’t a total waste.

I did intend to make these during the Aussie long weekend, but I was in no state to operate machinery, so these were made a few days later...

Lamington Cupcakes

These are supremely easy. I was debating doing actual lamingtons to hold true to tradition and all that, but I had about half an hour in which to get these out the door, so that just was not an option.

Whip up a batch of vanilla cuppies, dip in chocolate icing and roll in coconut. Super easy.

Now I’m not going to share my vanilla cupcake recipe, because I think that’s boring and everyone generally has a go-to recipe anyway.

My chocolate icing? Considering I’m more of a ‘test and see’ baker, I have no idea what quantities I used. Sift 1 cup (ish) of icing sugar, sift in 1 tbspn or thereabouts of cocoa and add enough milk to be spreadable.If you add too much milk, chuck in some more icing sugar. Simples.

Note that since these have milk in the icing, probably best to store in the fridge if not eaten straight away. Although I only made 6 little cuppies, so this was not an issue for me...