Some Australia Day cakes

Today, and last night, I made a couple of varieties of cupcakes to fit the Australia Day theme - pavlova cupcakes courtesy of a Donna Hay recipe and a batch of my tried and tested cupcakes that I turned into 'lamingtons'.   The Donna Hay pavlova cupcake recipe is available online here and I've blogged my recipe of my tried and tested previously here.

The pavlova cupcakes look beautiful, and taste great as is.  Even better is when you pop the pavlova top off and putting in some raspberry coulis and whipped cream, and sandwiching the pavlova top back on.  It will make an absolute mess, and you should definitely lean over your plate when you eat the cupcake like that!

I don't really like lamingtons.  The cake portion tends to be dry and the chocolate outside generally just tastes like sugar.  So I whipped up a batch of the tried and tested vanilla cupcakes, baked them in a mini size and piled on some dark chocolate ganache and shredded coconut - lamington appearance, with a delicious taste!