Australians are very protective of their national cake, and with good reason, but who makes the best?
Lamingtons are one of those things, like Tim Tams and toad racing, that are big in Australia but, despite the best efforts of the residents of Ramsay Street, almost unknown elsewhere. Antipodeans of my acquaintance, however, go into nostalgic raptures at the very mention of these little cakes, a staple of Australia Day celebrations and school bake sales. (One friend claims he ate two a day as a child, so he may well be the only person who’s ever lost weight by moving to the UK.)
Said to have been named after – or, by those less familiar with the culinary skills of your average Victorian aristocrat, invented by – a former governor of Queensland, it’s also been appropriated, not uncontroversially, by New Zealand (food writer Irina Georgescu informs me that the same cake is also very popular among the Swabian community in Romania and Germany). Far be it from me, a mere Pom, to comment on the issue, but I will say that whoever came up with them was a clever little sausage.