A lamington is an Australian cake made from squares of butter cake or sponge cake coated in an outer layer of chocolate or chocolate icing and rolled in desiccated coconut.
21st July was designated as National Lamington Day in Australia to commemorate an Australian stalwart cake. The history of it is fascinating if you believe what Wikipedia says.
The earliest known reference to the naming of the lamington, from June 1927, links the cake to Lord Lamington, who served as Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901. Most stories attribute its creation to Lord Lamington's chef, the French-born Armand Galland, who was called upon at short notice to feed unexpected guests. Using only the limited ingredients available, Galland cut up some left-over French vanilla sponge cake baked the day before, dipped the slices in chocolate and set them in coconut. Coconut was not widely used in European cooking at that time, but was known to Galland, whose wife was from Tahiti, where coconut was a common ingredient.
It is timely that there is this day to celebrate lamingtons because next month it will be Australian Children's Book Week where the slogan is Reading is Magic. In Australia's most well known picture book Possum Magic the magic 'device' is a lamington. A bite of lamington will make Hush visible again. What a good excuse to reread an old favourite!
There is a copy of mom Fox's lamington recipe here.
Surprisingly, there's not a lot of other story books which feature lamingtons. Your library might have a copy of The Lamington Man by Kel Richards which is a Gingerbread Man story with a lamington instead.
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