Re-Inventing the Lamington 2014 Day Nine: Strawberry Jam Lamingtons

The pandas loved being on Instagram. It made them feel complete.

Inspired by my Seville Orange Lamingtons, what was there to stop me from repeating the process using some of my other homemade preserves? Really. What?

Truth told, I think it's nice to have a recipe like this to get me to use up what I stash in the cupboard upstairs. I have a bad habit of keeping the jams and chutneys I make because they are 'precious'. It's counter productive. The point of preserving is to put something away so you can actually enjoy it later, not watch it gather dust.

These lamingtons actually remind me of the old fashioned baker's madeleines you used to see all the time when I was little and which I haven't seen for years and years now that I sit and think about it. The closest you get, at least in the UK, is that rotten coconut and jam topped cake that they do in Starbucks.

No offense, Star-Bees, but my lamingtons school your rubbish loaf cake. Now go and pay your corporation taxes, dammit.

Maybe those madeleines will make a comeback. Stranger things have happened. Look at the resurgence of Tottenham Cake! It's everywhere. I hate it.

Until that day, I give you my Strawberry Jam Lamingtons. Enjoy. And don't forget to Re-Invent the Lamington yourself. I have had loads of great entries so far, judging is going to be a nightmare!

Strawberry Jam Lamingtons

You will need:

1 x batch Coconut and Vanilla Bean Chiffon Cake

1 x jar (around 250g) strawberry jam (you can make your own)
100g dessicated coconut

1. To make slicing the cake into lamingtons easier, I wrap it in cling film and freeze overnight. Cut the frozen cake into 24 cubes, or as many as you like/can.
2. Make the jam glaze: mix the strawberry jam with a little hot water from a recently boiled kettle until smooth and glossy. Add the water a little at a time, because if you add too much, the glaze will thin out and become unusable. Set the coconut in a dish.
3. Dip each cube of cake into the jammy glaze and then roll in the coconut. Set aside on a wire rack to dry out. Plastic panda bears are an optional, but thrilling, extra.

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2014 Day Eight: Coconut Lamingtons

 I just freaking LOVE my hot pink background. Sorry not sorry if I overuse.

 instagram.com/peterdelicious

Some people call me Vanilla Boy, using the term in its modern slang sense. I say, 'If only they knew.'

But regardless, I thought a vanilla lamington might kick some ass. Imagine: fluffy vanilla scented sponge cake, dipped in a creamy white chocolate ganache and sprinkled with vanilla infused sugar crystals. Exciting, no?

Trouble is, as I got ready to make these vanilla lams, I lost interest. I didn't want to eat such a sweet and sickly sounding confection. I wanted coconut, and lots of it.

Now, you might say, looking at this blog, 'Wow. That's a lot of coconut! More than enough.' And you'd be absolutely right. But (and this is true of so many things in life), do you know what's better than just enough?

More.

So we're having coconut lamingtons. They are my favourite of the 2014 batch of Re-Invented Lamingtons. At least, they are my favourites out of the ones I re-invented myself. The lamingtons you have been re-inventing and tweeting me about look pretty sensational as well to be honest. I love seeing your entries when I do this every year, it makes me want to bust out my Blogging Community apron and just weep with happiness.

Right now I have to finish this post though, so my tears are on standby. If you want to Re-Invent the Lamington yourself, I'm running a great giveaway. Details here. Get involved!

Coconut Lamingtons

You will need:

1 x half batch Victoria Sandwich

300g icing sugar, sifted

50ml Malibu (I'm not even embarrassed.) 

100g dessicated coconut 

1. To make slicing the cake into lamingtons easier, I wrap it in cling film and freeze overnight. Cut the frozen cake into 12 cubes, or as many as you like/can.To be honest, with this cake (which I baked in a 20cm square tin), as opposed to the chiffon cake I used for the other lamingtons this year, crumbing and breaking is less of an issue, but I still like nice defined edges so recommend the overnight cold treatment.
2. Make the glaze: mix the Malibu and icing sugar together until smooth. If you need to thin it down a little more, use a few drops of hot water from the kettle. Set the dessicated coconut in a dish.
3. Dip each cube of cake into first the glaze and then cover generously in coconut. Set aside on a wire rack to dry out. 
4. We ate these with ice cream. I don't know why, but they felt much more like a dessert lamington than some of the others. 

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2014 Day Five: Wintergreen Lamingtons

Watermelon Kewpie is back. Rejoice.

I don't want to shave. It's a back to work day, and I have five days of stubbly growth to rid my face of. I can never bear it: I love the way my face looks fuzzy, and have no interest in the clean shaven look. Bah.

OK, day five. Today is brought to you by what I could call the craziest lamington I have ever made, but a quick scan of my sidebar leads me to believe that that honour still rests with the Purple Rain Lamington, and come to think of it, probably will do until I fashion my Aperol Spritz lamingtons.

Wintergreen is something that English people usually I hate. But not this one. I adore it. Whenever I am lucky enough to visit the States, I always, always, ALWAYS bring back as many wintergreen flavoured things as possible. The list last time included Lifesavers, Tic-Tacs, Altoids and chewing gum, and boy oh boy, has my mouth been fresh.

I would go as far as to say that, ignoring the very real and fierce competition from cinnamon and that delicious teaberry flavour that gum comes in, wintergreen is for me, The Taste of America.

When I was cosidering possible lamington flavours for this year's Re-Inventing the Lamington, it suddenly hit me that since wintergreen was one of my favourite things in the whole world, it needed to be included in the lamington hit parade.

Obviously, I know that few people would ever put coconut and wintergreen together (and let's face it, certainly not Mother Nature!), and I can't say that I would rush to do it again, but who cares? This is meant to be fun.

On a side note, Percy loved them.

Remember that you still have time to Re-Invent the Lamington yourself, and win a beautiful prize. Get to it.


Wintergreen Lamingtons

You will need:

1 x batch Coconut and Vanilla Bean Chiffon Cake

2 x packets Wintergreen flavour Tic-Tacs
50g soft butter
100g icing sugar, sifted

250g icing sugar, sifted
50ml warm water
100g dessicated coconut

1. To make slicing the cake into lamingtons easier, I wrap it in cling film and freeze overnight. Cut the frozen cake into 8 generous cubes, or as many as you like/can.
2. Make the  glaze: mix the 250g icing sugar with the warm water until smooth and glossy. Add the water a little at a time, because if you add too much, the glaze will thin out and become unusable. Set the coconut in a dish.
3. Make the filling. Crush the Tic-Tacs - I did this in a pestle and mortar. Mix the resulting wintergreen powder with the soft butter and 100g icing sugar. Use this buttercream filling to sandwich the cake pieces together.
4. Dip each cake sandwich into first the glaze and then roll in the coconut. Set aside on a wire rack to dry out.

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2014 Day Four: Seville Orange Lamingtons

Wow. Day Four. Nearly half way through the coconut coated monster challenge that is Re-Inventing the Lamington.Where does the time go?

Today's lamingtons are a tribute to my favourite citrus, the Seville Orange. Sevilles are used for marmalade, mostly. Essentially, they are bitter and not much to look at (if I were a fruit... sigh...), but they have the sort of intense orange flavour that just jumps up and punches you in the mouth. I love them, and use them instead of lemons in all sorts of things when they are in season, but regular readers know that already, right?

I wanted to create a lamington that celebrated their unique flavour and fragrance. The trouble is that they are only in the shops for a few weeks from the middle of January, so I had to do something that I wasn't really sure would work; use them in their preserved form. That meant trying out marmalade as a glaze.

Well, I am happy to report that it worked. More than worked. These lamingtons pack all the kerpow of a Seville, have a simple and clean look and really deliver on flavour.

And you know, that's really what baking's all about at the end of the day. If you aren't pretty, or rich... Flaunting your cakes is all you have in life.

I mean, unless you want to be nice. But, pfft... Who has time for that?

Remember that you still have time to Re-Invent the Lamington yourself, and win a beautiful prize. Get to it.

Seville Orange Lamingtons

You will need:

1 x batch Coconut and Vanilla Bean Chiffon Cake

1 x jar (around 250g) Seville Orange Marmalade (I used homemade, but you can obviously buy it if you prefer)
100g dessicated coconut

1. To make slicing the cake into lamingtons easier, I wrap it in cling film and freeze overnight. Cut the frozen cake into 24 cubes, or as many as you like/can.
2. Make the marmalade glaze: mix the marmalade with a little hot water from a recently boiled kettle until smooth and glossy. Add the water a little at a time, because if you add too much, the glaze will thin out and become unusable. Set the coconut in a dish.
3. Dip each cube of cake into first the glaze and then roll in the coconut. Set aside on a wire rack to dry out. It will be difficult to resist the temptation to lick your fingers with these lamingtons, or at least it will if you love marmalade as much as I do, but in the interests of hygiene, please try. 

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2014 Day Two: Amaretti Lamingtons

I have a friend, Natalie, who, like myself, gets stressed over the sorts of things that others think are hum-drum and don't even bat an eyelid over. We worry too much about what people think. Mind you, conversely, I think we both handle the tough stuff that would turn some people into screaming banshees quite well and with a minimum of fuss, so I guess it balances out in the end.

We have a turn of phrase, if you will, that we dust off to calm each other down in times of panic and drama. We say it in our pitch perfect Northern accents (we're both from the best part of the country originally), and it goes like this:

'Look, Duck: if I had a pound for every time I did something I shouldn't, well then I'd probably have about a tenner.'

It works for us.

Of course, nobody gives me a pound when I do something to be regretted later. And nobody gives me a pound when I do something right either. I think I definitely deserve a pound or two for coming up with these lazy person's lamingtons though -  No baking. Declassé liqueur. Italian glamour. These have it all.

I adore Tia Maria and so does Perce. We have it on the rocks and so should you. But it's also great for soaking cakes to add coffee flavour and sweetness. I used it to moisten some of the hard amaretti biscuits we got given stacks of for Christmas to make these beautiful 'lamaretti' and it has been what can only be called a triumph.

Don't forget: lamingtons are not just for me to re-invent. You can have a go yourself and maybe even win a prize!

Amaretti Lamingtons

You will need:

12 hard baked amaretti (not the soft ones labelled 'morbidi')
100ml Tia Maria
200g milk chocolate
100g dessicated coconut

1. Melt the chocolate and set aside cool slightly. Set the coconut in a dish. Pour the Tia Maria into a small dish or bowl.
2. Dip the amaretti into the liqueur and shake off excess. Then dip each wet cookie into the chocolate and roll in the coconut.
3. Set aside on a plate or rack to set before eating.

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2014 Day One: Clotted Cream Lamingtons

 

I'm just going to give it to you how you want it with the lamingtons this year: full throttle, fast and nasty. It's Valentine's Day after all - let's treat ourselves.

I got the idea for these lams from a Twitter conversation I had with Dom and the good people at Rodda's, who make the clotted cream that everybody dreams of pretty much every night of their lives.Well, be honest with yourselves - I know what you think about when nobody's watching.

Even when I was younger and thought I didn't like cream (I've been wrong about a lot of things in life, especially things I've thought I wouldn't like... but most of those aren't blog suitable topics), clotted cream always had me salivating. It's rich, smooth and fatty to the point that it seems light and dreamy. But then, pretty much 100% of the time, I think that full fat dairy products taste as though they're low fat even when they aren't. It's one of the food world's great magic tricks.

These lamingtons draw on everything I have learnt from three years of re-inventing. They're chiffon cake, which is flavoursome and soft, even straight from the fridge; they are coated in real milk chocolate, which gives a crisp carapace, the perfect counterpart to their fluffy interior; they are filled, and gorgeously so. I think they might just be perfect, a lamington that the 2nd Baron Lamington really would be proud of. Well, I wouldn't let him call them 'bloody, poofy, woolly biscuits', that's for sure.

That's a 'bloody, puffy, woolly' moustache you have there, Baron Lamington.

Remember that you still have time to Re-Invent the Lamington yourself, and win a beautiful prize. Get to it.

Clotted Cream Lamingtons

You will need:

1 x batch Coconut and Vanilla Bean Chiffon Cake

300g milk chocolate (or plain if you prefer)
1 pot of clotted cream
100g dessicated coconut

1. To make slicing the cake into lamingtons easier, I wrap it in cling film and freeze overnight. Cut the frozen cake into eight rectangles. You can eat the trimmings later.
2. Melt the chocolate either over warm water or in the microwave. Set the coconut in a dish.
3. Now you have a choice: you can either slice each piece of cake through the middle and sandwich with clotted cream before dipping in chocolate and coconut, which is tricky to do neatly but keeps the filling as a nice surprise, or you can dip the cake cubes first into the chocolate, then roll in coconut and slice them when the chocolate has set, before putting them together again with clotted cream. My preference is for the second method, as it gives the lamingtons more of a dessert feel. But I am giving you the freedom of choice.

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2012: The Round Up!

Well, it never fails to amaze me that you bake along. Honestly. Words fail.

I always think, 'It's just a silly game that I convince myself to play; nobody really likes it.' And yet you do, and all bust out the lamingtons like there's no tomorrow. I think I had the first entry this year before I'd even posted a Re-Invented Lamington myself. You are a dedicated bunch.

I will say that I was on the 'rather' side of devastated to discover that there was no Lady Gaga Lamington ('It doesn't matter if you love lam, or Capital L-A-M...'), but don't let it get you down as well, because we did get an Elvis Presley Lamington instead. But you'll have to wait for that one...

Do please read to the end of this post, since I need your input to help me select a winner. And be sure to check out the blogs of all those who entered - there're lots of great posts here.

With out further ado, the 2012 Lamington Hit Parade!

(Edit: I forgot this first one! So am sticking it up top so you get to see it!)

Rachel from Be Confectionate made some Cannoli Lamingtons. It's a pretty touching post; check it out. I had a look around her blog and she has some other rather snazzy lammies as well, so lovers of my inventions need to get over there pronto...




Bea made Meyer Lemon Lamingtons with white chocolate and toasted coconut. I've never had a Meyer Lemon, or a Key Lime. It strikes me that Americans can be quite selfish with their speciality citrus and refuse to export. I want these lamingtons. Now.



Check out these Lamington Whoopie Pies from the Zuckerbäckerei! They were posted on the Delicious Delicious Delicious Facebook Page (come join in!), and I nearly collapsed with excitement when I saw them.



Drink More Tea made three lots of lamingtons. The first were these gorgeous Iced-Vovo Lamingtons (how beautiful is this picture by the way? I ♥ this blog...). Never had an Iced-Vovo before, but you know what? I'll take the lamington instead. Gorgeous!


As if that weren't enough though, she also crafted some Lamington Cake Pops (bang on trend there, DMT), and, a woman after my own heart, Lamington Love Spoons. You know, I love seeing the party spoons you all make. I should do a round up of them one day...



Now, I won't lie to you. This next one made me scream. It's from My My Sunflower, is a Pandan and Coconut Lamington, and wait until you see the colour. I have a bit of a thing for pandan flavoured goodies, and got a bit obsessed with them in Singapore. Not that it's my favourite lamington or anything...


OK, do you want a Red Velvet Lamington? Great, so do I. We have Just So Cakey to thank for it, and we surely will. Blog envy: I want a flashing 'Happy Australia Day' sign too.


Mary Mary Culinary says I'm bossy and she's right. But it got her to bake Chestnut Lamingtons using homemade candied chestnuts, so I beg you to please excuse me. I think she deserves applause for this. Homemade!


In the UK, we have the Crunchie bar, and very nice it is too. But Nightwyrm made a Violet Crumble Lamington which is basically the Aussie version. Methinks that is very appropriate indeed! It's made from Golden Syrup cake by the way. Want.


Alison doesn't have a blog (as far as I am aware); she entered via email, which is always cool. I like getting emails that aren't from PR people. :) Her Trifecta Lamingtons comprise of peanut butter, chocolate cake, frosting and homemade candied bacon. I think I want to try this one most of all!


Lydia made a very English themed entry - the Apple Crumble Lamington. I can't believe I never thought of this myself. I've failed as a Brit. I like these because the oatsy coating means they''ll help to keep your heart healthy.



I really hate people who are queeny about presentation, because all I really care about is what food tastes like. But I have to say that I love the way Kate of What Kate Baked has served her Hot Chocolate Lamingtons. Beautiful! Love the explanation of what we're actually celebrating with Australia Day too (it's not all about the lamingtons, sadly!).


Let me be clear about something: you cannot please me more than with the words 'White Chocolate and Macadamia Lamingtons'. Thank you, Kalinda of Wheat Free Meat Free. I'll never forget this. MACADAMIAS PEOPLE!



This next one is one of the best lamingtons I've ever seen. It has a face! Raina made (or should that be 'papped' - she says they met at the Louvre) Cherrington Lamsicles. My heart has skipped a beat.
I promised you an Elvis Presley Lamington and I've got one for you right here. It's from Curtis, and features the Kewpie he won in last year's contest. I absolutely love it, and have to say a big 'Welcome Back Curtis', since he's suffered from a bad bout of what I like to call Blog Burn-Out recently. Think he's back for good now though!


And that's not it!

Natasha posted her entry on the Facebook page as well. Check out this stunning Lamington-Inspired Cake Roll. You know I've never made a roll cake? Should I remedy that do you think?



I *think* that's everyone who entered. If I've missed you off the list, give me a shout out and I'll fix it straight away. I'd hate to think I'd somehow left your lamingtons behind in my coconut and cake crumb littered wake...

So, as I said readers, I need your help. I have decided that this year I'm going to be doing the judging myself. It takes less time this way and is a lot simpler. However, it's by no means an easy task. How can I choose a prize winner at the drop of a hat when there has been so much creativity? I'll need a few days to think about it. And please, let me know your thoughts. Either here in the comments, or over on FB. Whose lamington would you rather make or eat? Whose blog post did you enjoy reading the most?

Your comments will really make this task easier, so don't be shy about it. Tell me what you think!

See you back here in a few days for the announcement of our winner! And best of luck to all who entered.

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2012 Day Ten: Half and Half Lamingtons

(In which Mr. P makes a half-arsed attempt at justifying shoddy ideas.)

Happy Australia Day folks!

These are not the most inspired lamingtons of my life, let's face it.

The idea was there; I wanted to re-create the half and half cookies I eat whenever I'm in New York. It's been far too long since I was last there, and there's a little deli I know that does really yummy sugar cookies with that well-known, half black half white icing. I thought it would really work as a lamington, and it isn't that it is bad so much as it's just... Kind of like a regular lamington, only dipped in white chocolate. I feel slightly fraudulent claiming that they've been 'Re-Invented'.

Still. Let's not moan. It's the end of my Ten Days of Re-Invention. It's been really fun this year! You know, the last one is always a bit of a 'Scrape the Barrell Lamington', since I've usually run out of steam, but I've made some truly yummy lams in 2012 so I'm not going to feel bad. The popcorn versions were sensational! I'm also pleased to say that there has been a steady stream of entries for my prize draw from you lovely lot, and I can't wait to share them with you all. Remember, the deadline is 31 January. You still have the weekend to bake up a storm!

Before I give you the recipe for these (it's basic butter cake again, so you know they taste of sin), I'm just wondering if any of you readers live in areas that are famous for baking? New York has its half and half cookies, and well, Australia obviously has its lamingtons. What about where you live?

And before you ask: no. Cardiff is not famous for Krispy Kreme. Though it is famous for Welsh Cakes. Maybe I should post a recipe for those...

Half and Half Lamingtons

You will need:

175g plain flour
175g soft butter
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp milk

500g plain chocolate
200g dessicated coconut
150g white chocolate

1. First, make the butter cake. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin, and pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
   
2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking powder and vanilla together until you have a smooth batter. Scrape this into the prepared cake tin and level out. Bake for 25 minutes or until the cake tests done. That means that when you stick a cocktail stick (or a piece of spaghetti!) into the centre of the cake, it will come out clean, without any uncooked batter clinging to it.
3. Cool the cake in the tin on a wire rack, and when completely cold, turn out and slice into 16 squares.
4. Melt the plain chocolate, cool slightly and have ready the coconut in a separate dish. Make your lamingtons: working quickly, dip the cake cubes into the chocolate and immediately roll them in the coconut.
5. Allow the cubes of cake to dry for an hour, then melt the white chocolate and repeat the dipping. However, this time, only dip the lamingtons half way. I didn't like the way they looked when rolled in coconut for a second time, but you can do so if you wish. There should be enough coconut.

Re-Invent the Lamington Yourself!

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2012 Day Eight: White Chocolate and Rosemary Lamingtons

No Kewpies. An 'All In Good Taste' lamington.

I find that as I get older I become less and less excited about new and unusual sounding flavour combinations, in much the same way that I grow less and less tolerant of cheap bin liners, but the world keeps throwing them out at me regardless.

We do not need mackerel flavoured macarons (scroll down and for God's sake, someone please tell them in Brittany!), foie gras flavoured ice-cream (you know, I love SF, but for this, I hate it) or azuki frappuccino ('Taste the daydream'? Taste the sick more like...). We do not and never have. So why are they being produced then? It is a mystery worthy of Holmes and Watson.

I can say though, no word of a lie, that today's lamington recipe is a thing of great beauty and deliciousness. I know this having eaten one mere moments ago, but can offer further evidence in support of the combination of white chocolate and rosemary, though it is anecdotal since I never posted the cake to which I shall now refer; you must believe me. I implore you.

Last Summer I made an apple and rosemary loaf cake and topped it with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. The one from this cake. And it was killer. We ate the lot. I meant to re-bake it and post it, but life got in the way. I did take something away from the experience though, and that was that my favourite flavour pairing in the cake was not the rosemary and apple, but the rosemary and white chocolate. It just worked.

These lamingtons are a little different to that original cake. Obviously, there's no apple included, but I have also added the herb to the icing (well, coating), rather than the cake. It's quite a lot stronger this way (and rather surprising as well, because you can't actually see the flecks of rosemary in there; the coconut obscures them), but I like it like this. I can't claim that it was on purpose mind you. I actually forgot to add the little pile of rosemary I had chopped in readiness to the rich batter that made up the cake component of today's lams. This is what happens when you have only two days to Re-Invent and 10 lamington recipes to come up with - you turn into a sieve-for-brain-nincompoop.

I'd like to draw attention to the lovely flowers my rosemary bush was covered with, which garnish the lamington you see here. Further evidence of global warming? Well, maybe. But pretty at any rate.

White Chocolate and Rosemary Lamingtons

You will need:

175g plain flour
175g soft butter
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp milk

1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary (I don't have any dried stuff, but it would work here, though I'd only use 1 tsp)

500g white chocolate
200g dessicated coconut

1. First, make the butter cake. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin, and pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
   
2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking powder and vanilla together until you have a smooth batter. Scrape this into the prepared cake tin and level out. Bake for 25 minutes or until the cake tests done. That means that when you stick a cocktail stick (or a piece of spaghetti!) into the centre of the cake, it will come out clean, without any uncooked batter clinging to it.
3. Cool the cake in the tin on a wire rack, and when completely cold, turn out and slice into 16 squares.
4. Melt the chocolate, cool slightly and mix in the chopped rosemary. Use this mixture to make your lamingtons: working quickly, dip the cake cubes into the chocolate and immediately roll them in the coconut.
5. They can be laid out on greaseproof paper to dry and set, and if you want to garnish with fresh rosemary flowers, like I did, be sure to put the flower stems into the lamingtons while the chocolate is still fairly liquid. Otherwise it will solidify and you'll find it impossible (read: very difficult) to break through the crisp shell.
   

Re-Invent the Lamington Yourself!

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2012 Day Six: Funfetti Failure Lamingtons

Stupid.

(In which Mr. P expresses regret for the lamingtons that never were.)

I had this idea, way back at the start of the original Re-Inventing the Lamington in 2010, of making lamingtons out of rainbow cake, using the recipe for my Rocky Horror Cupcakes as the base. They were going to be Sydney Pride Lamingtons (for the gays!), and I was going to tell you all in the post about how Sydney's famous Mardi Gras ruined my life in 2008 when I was travelling back (or trying to) on standby from Singapore at the time it was going on. We (me and him indoors) had been in Malaysia, but hadn't even considered what was happening Down Under and its effect on our plans. Why would we? We were strictly Equatorial, nothing Southern Hem. about us.

Mistake.

Rule #1 of standby travel: consider if your destination is a connections hub. It effectively doubles the number of passengers flying there, and halves the number of available seats.

I wasn't flying with my own airline so my priority was pretty much non-existent. And do you know how many airline emplyees were flying in and out of Australia for that damned Mardi Gras? GABILLIONS!

You know, Singapore is lovely, but being stuck there at the airport watching hung over revellers who haven't even been there for longer than a few hours getting on planes ahead of you even though you were there first is not. Especially when you have to get back for a flight duty.

Needless to say, we made it, at great personal expense. But the memory is a bitter one. And I never got round to making the lamingtons that the story inspired, so it has until now gone unshared.

But, I still liked the idea of a party lamington and decided to get hold of some Pilsbury Funfetti Cake mix as an easy alternative to the food colouring nightmare that is the RHC. Easy but expensive. Do you know what it costs to buy that stuff in the UK? It was out of the question. I decided to appropriate my own version using Victoria sandwich batter and my beloved sanding sugars in blue and purple. Well, I do love a challenge.

While the cake was baking, I watched a program about the Great Barrier Reef and, well, shave my legs and call me Grandpa if it didn't feature that crazy old hunk of corals glowing purple, blue and green under UV lights at night. This in itself didn't excite me (though it was pretty), but it did make me think it would be appropriately Australian to change things up and make a Great Barrier Reef Lamington out of my baking cakes instead of the Sydney Pride version.

Well, reader, I'm pro change. I envisaged cubes of purple, blue and green flecked cake, coated with ganache and blue sanding sugar (to represent the ocean) - the Smurfs of the lamington world. I thought how fun it would be to accessorise the pictures I would take with plastic fish and coral. (Well, fun of sorts.)

But upon slicing the cakes, I realised, to my great dismay, that it was not to be. The sanding sugars had, well, sort of 'baked out'. The colours were muted. I won't lie: I was momentarily devastated. I think making all these lamingtons in such a short space of time had gotten to me to be honest. The clean up takes so long; it gets me down. Add that to unexpected colour loss, and the tears were ready to fall.

But am I not pro change? Am I not made of sterner stuff? I decided to just get on with it, and turned these into my failed-but-still-enjoyed lamingtons. The fact is, the cake part is butter cake. It looks a little funky with it's oddly dispersed waves of colour, but it tastes delicious. Lamington disasters do occur. Remember Mathea's house fire? I guess I should feel glad that my disaster is only botched cake.

Funfetti Failure Lamingtons

You will need:

175g plain flour
175g soft butter
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp milk

1 tbsp of sanding sugar in each of your three chosen colours

400g dark chocolate
200g crème fraïche (or sour cream) at room temperature

200g dessicated coconut (I like to use really finely chopped stuff)

1. First, make the butter cake. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin, and pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
   
2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking powder and vanilla together until you have a smooth batter. Scrape this into the prepared cake tin and level out. Do this in three batches, sprinkling a little of the sanding sugars in each colour over the top after each layer. Bake for 25 minutes or until the cake tests done. That means that when you stick a cocktail stick (or a piece of spaghetti!) into the centre of the cake, it will come out clean, without any uncooked batter clinging to it.
3. Cool the cake in the tin on a wire rack, and when completely cold, turn out and slice into 16 squares.
4. Make the ganache: Melt the chocolate, cool slightly and mix together with the crème fraïche until you have a smooth icing. I always use crème fraïche for ganache now by the way; you can use it instantly, unlike double cream-based ganache which takes thirty seven years to cool and thicken.
5. Make the lamingtons: working quickly, dip the cake cubes into the ganache coating evenly. Immediately roll them in the coconut and set on a sheet of greaseproof paper to dry.
6. Or don't do any of this. These are failure lamingtons after all.
   

Re-Invent the Lamington Yourself!