Becoming Betti Baker: Strawberry Lamington Lovebites

Valentines day is just around the corner now, and each year I love making my hubby heart shaped muffins and the like. Last night while laying awake in bed I was pondering how I was going to make miss almost three's strawberry birthday cake that she has requested, and while on that train of thought came up with Strawberry Lamington Lovebites, a mix between a strawberry swirl cake and lamingtons! First thing this morning I jumped out of bed and got creating. Here's what happened.

I decided to make the cake in my slab tin, which is 30 cm x 20 cm, so it needed to be quite a big cake.

What you need for strawberry cake...

250 gram butter
2 cups caster suger
4 eggs
3 cups of plain flour
1 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla paste
2 tsp strawberry essence
300 mls milk

What you need for strawberry syrup (swirl)

1 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup water
handful of fresh strawberries

What you need for chocolate icing

4 1/2 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
20 grams butter
1 cup boiling water
shredded coconut for covering in

How you do it... Strawberry cake

Cream butter and caster sugar together, add eggs one at a time, while mixing
Add plain flour, salt, baking powder, vanilla and strawberry essence
Once mixed well, slowly pour in the milk, and let it mix well for a few minutes, stopping once to scrape down the edges. I like to have a taste of the batter at this point to see if you want to add any extra strawberry of vanilla flavouring.

How you do it… Strawberry syrup

Take a nice handful of fresh strawberry, couldn't tell you exactly how many, and wizz them up in a food processor making a fresh puree
In a saucepan put the caster sugar and the water on a low heat for a minute then add the strawberry puree and let it simmer until the temperature reaches 105 degrees c.
Let it cool.

Putting it together

In your large greased tin pour in one third of the cake batter
Place your strawberry syrup into a piping bag and pour some out over the top of the batter, it will be quite runny which it fine, take knife or skewer and marble it through the batter.
Pour another third of the batter on top and repeat the above process, keeping some syrup for later on.
Pour the last of the batter on top
Place in a pre heated oven at 160 degrees.
Bake for 45 minutes, or until you get get a clean skewer when doing a prick test.

Covering the lovebites is just like covering lamingtons, just with two lots of dipping.

Once your slab cake is completely cooled cut it up into squares, little or big, it's up to you.
One at a time dip into the left over strawberry syrup you have, then straight into the chocolate icing, then straight into the coconut and generously cover them. let them stand for a few hours to set before serving them.