**Lamingtons**

Recipe from a cute little book I have called "200 Cakes and Bakes"

Ingredients

• 125g/4oz/1 stick of butter
• 125g/4oz/1.25 cups caster sugar (regular white sugar that has been pulsed in a food processor a few times works perfectly fine here)
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 250g/8oz/roughly 2.5 cups self raising flour
• pinch of salt
• 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 400g/13oz/4 cups icing sugar (powdered sugar)
• 100g/3.5oz/1 cup cocoa powder
• 150-175ml/5-6 fl oz/1.5-1.75 cups boiling water
• 200g/7oz/2 cups desiccated coconut (I used sweetened dried coconut I think? Again, pulsed in the processor to make the bits smaller)

Beat the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl until pale and creamy.
Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, until incorporated.
Sift in the flour and salt and fold into the creamed mixture with the milk and vanilla (this wording is weird… I added the vanilla to the eggs at the beginning, and threw all the milk in once the eggs were mixed in)
Alternatively, beat all the cake ingredients together in a food processor until smooth.

Transfer the mixture to an oiled and base-lined 18X25cm (7X10 inch) cake tin. (I used 9X9 inch, don’t think it really matters too much)
Spread the surface level and bake in a preheated oven, 190C (375F) for 25-30 minutes until risen and firm to the touch.
Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then loosen the edges, turn out on a wire rack and peel off the lining paper.
Leave out overnight.

I used a longer piece of parchment paper so that the cake was able to be lifted out of the pan, but then I’m kinda lazy like that. I still flipped it at the end. Also, when I ‘transfered’ the mixture, I thought it seemed incredibly dry, it was very much like a dough. But it turned out well!

Make the icing.
Sift the icing sugar and cocoa powder into a bowl, make a well in the center and beat in the boiling water to make a smooth chocolate icing with a pouring consistency. (I did not beat, just mixed it all together with a spatula. It came together very easily, as long as the water was still boiling when I poured it in. It seems like a LOT of icing, but you do need almost all of it)

Cut the cooled cake into 24 pieces. Use 2 forks to dip each cake into the icing and then immediately coat with the coconut all over. Leave to set on baking paper. (I ‘left it to set’ on a cooling rack.)

I wanted jam in the centre of mine, so I sliced the cake into quarters before splitting, so that I could do it more evenly. This is not a fat cake. I used about 4-5 tablespoons of strawberry jam (raspberry would work even better, but it depends on your tastes) that I slightly warmed in the microwave. Spread it out over the cake and then sandwiched it all back together and let sit for 5 minutes or so, so that it would hold together better.