Ah....lamingtons....this really makes me homesick, and as a true blue Kiwi, I shall be putting a lot more of our delicious cuisine on here to share with you. I've not seen Laminations anywhere in my travels outside New Zealand and Australia, so this is something you really should have a go at. Our cousins across the pond claim ownership of the lamington, yet it remains an iconic treasure of New Zealand. Maybe, like the Pavlova, it's just so lovely that we have just accepted them to be "antipodean".Lamingtons are named after Charles Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington, Governor of Queensland, Australia from 1896 to 1901. Armand Gallad, the resident chef of the Governor, was requested, at short notice, to provide something to feed unexpected guests. According, Gallad cut up some left over French vanilla sponge cake baked the day before, dipped the slices in chocolate and set them in coconut (an ingredient not widely used in European cooking at that time). Lady Lamingtons' guests then asked for the recipe. Another account claims the dessert resembled the homburg hats favoured by Lord Lamington. A further alternative origin is that One of Lord Lamington's servants, possibly Gallad or a maid, accidentally dropped a sponge cake into a dish of chocolate. Later on it was discovered to be very nice with desiccated coconut sprinkled over the top.
After leaving Queensland, he went on to become the Governor of Bombay in India for 4 years. He died at Lamington House, Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1940.
