Baking With Kids: Mini Lamington Cupcakes Recipe

ByChristie Burnett Updated on

This Friday, January 26th, is Australia Day. To get into the spirit of our national day, I invited Immy to help me bake a child-friendly twist on an Australian classic – the lamington. For those who don’t know, a lamington is an Australian dessert consisting of a square of sponge cake dipped into melted chocolate and then into grated coconut. Our mini lamington cupcakes are just as yummy but a little easier for children to help bake and decorate.

Cupcake recipe

We started off baking a batch of mini vanilla cupcakes. This cupcake recipe was passed on to me by a fabulous blogging friend, Cath of SquiggleMum, a number of years ago, and it is great for baking with children as it is so quick and easy.

Vanilla Cupcake Recipe

You will need:

  • 125g butter
  • 3/4 cup caster sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups self raising flour
  • 6 Tablespoons milk

To make:

  1. Preheat oven to 180ºC.
  2. Cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer and then add vanilla.
  3. Lightly beat eggs and gradually add to the butter/sugar mix.
  4. Add milk and sifted flour alternately, one third of the total amount at a time.
  5. Place cupcake wrappers into a muffin tray (we used a mini muffin tray and wrappers). Spoon mix into wrappers.
  6. Bake for 8-10 minutes (mini sized), 12-15 minutes for a larger sized cupcake.

Once your cupcakes have fully cooled it is time to add the lamington magic!

Lamington Cupcakes

You will need:

  • 1 batch mini vanilla cupcakes
  • 1 1/2 cups icing sugar
  • 1/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 10g butter or margarine
  • 1/3 cup boiling water
  • 1 cup desiccated coconut

To make:

Baking with kids - Lamington cupcake recipe

  1. To make the icing, sift together icing sugar and cocoa powder.
  2. Add butter and boiling water and stir until smooth. The icing should be runny, not thick.
  3. Place coconut into a separate bowl.
  4. Holding each cupcake by its base, dip into the icing mixture and hold for a moment to allow the mixture to soak into the cake a little and then dip into the coconut.

Lamington cupcake recipe

That’s it. Easy to make, yummy to eat! Happy Australia Day everyone!

Australia DayTo celebrate Australia Day this Sunday, January 26th, I’ve teamed up with some great Australian bloggers to bring you this fun Australia Day for Kids series. Check out all of the blogs below for some playful, Aussie-themed ideas you can do or make with your kids.

How will you be spending Australia Day?


Christie Burnett is a teacher, author and mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to find engaging, high quality learning ideas.

9 Comments

  2. I just love lamingtons, and these ones are so cute. Cammy and I make them all the time. These little cupcakes are something I could set up for her to decorate independently too.

    1. First try for us, Jackie 🙂 Immy had a great time baking and decorating them.

  3. This is absolutely something we are going to make. Where did you get the Aussie flags from?

      1. Excellent. We were heading there today so I will look. Thanks!

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