21st July Lamington Day

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.

21st July National Lamington Day

The 21st July is  in Australia. We started term 3 on Monday with lamingtons for morning tea on our PD day. They were yummy and we all said what a good way to start the term. I also thought to myself, what a good way to start a term in the library where the theme Australia: Story Country was going to be at the forefront. The children know the story of Possum Magic so well that they are quick to tell you that Hush eats a  lamington to make himself visible again.
Lamington Day

In Hobart, late one night, in the kitchens of the casino, they saw a lamington on a plate. Hush closed her eyes and nibbled. Grandma Poss held her breath - and waited.
"It's worked! It's worked!" she cried. And she was right. Hush could be seen from head to tail. Grandma Poss hugged Hush, and they both danced "Here We Go Round the Lamington Plate" till early in the morning. 
So from that time onwards, Hush was visible. But once a year, on her birthday, she and Grandma Poss ate a Vegemite sandwich, a piece of pavlova and half a lamington, just to make sure that Hush stayed visible forever.
And she did.

Possum Magic, Mem Fo

 Just bought the 2015 edition of The Possum Magic Cookbook and it has a lamington recipe along with other Australian classics.

The Lamington Man  by Kel Richards is an Australian Gingerbread man story and while it is lightweight it would be fun to share with the story of Lord Lamington and how lamingtons came to be.

Yesterday with my Kindergarten classes we talked about things that were 'Australian', authors that were 'Australian' and places in Australia. We talked about where they went in Australia during the holidays and we located them on a large map of Australia that I have affixed to the floor in the library.  This proved to be a big success. The sign around the kangaroo's neck says 'Hop in and read!' The Kindergarten students did lots of hopping on the map as you can imagine.