sf 2 oz

I had my first lamington last year in San Francisco at Danielle's baby shower (who is Australian) and I loved it! I'd forgotten about lamingotns until we arrived in Sydney and started seeing them at the store and in bakeries. I happen to be one of the few fans of Mounds (the candy bar), so obviously any treat with coconut and chocolate is right up my alley.

Here's a little history of the lamington that I found on Wikipedia. "Lamingtons are named after Charles Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington, who served as Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901. The Lamington's chef at Queensland's Government House, Armand Gallad, was called upon at short notice to provide something to feed unexpected guests. According to the Melbourne Age newspaper, 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 Lamington's guests then asked for the recipe."

Belive it or not, there's a National Lamington Day in Australia - July 21. Two weeks from today! Also the National Trust of Queensland named the Lamington one of Queensland's favorite icons. Pretty funny that cake has that much history and notoriety.

Anyway, making lamingtons is easy (if you buy the sponge cake), but messy. Here's the recipe. Now we have 12 lamingtons to eat in the next few days...I think I may give some to our neighbors. Maybe.

On Saturday we decided to head over to the Sydney Fish Market, which is on Blackwattle Bay by Pyrmont. We were pretty excited after reading that it's the largest market of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and the world's second largest seafood market in terms of variety outside of Japan. I don't know if we missed something or didn't see the whole market, but we were underwhelmed. There's an industrial section of the market where the daily fish auctions take place, but it didn't seem like just anyone could go in those areas. So we stuck to the commercial 'touristy' area with seafood retailers and cafes. Everyone seemed to be getting these platters of takeaway seafood and chips and going outside to eat, so we decided to be followers and do the same. 

After pushing our way through the crowds, we got our platter of oysters, fish, calamari, scallops and octopus. The majority of it was fried..a healthy treat! Outside we tried to eat our food before the seagulls did (one bird almost hopped onto my plate while I was eating)! Later in the day our stomachs were hating us for that platter..we had plans to go out for the 4th, but were not feeling well. While I'm glad we saw the fish market, I don't think we'll be going back.

On Sunday we were feeling better and finally got behind the wheel, woohoo! Last week we both signed up with Go Get, a car share company similar to Zipcar in the US. We waited until the last minute (this morning) to book a car so we didn't get the Mini Cooper we had our eye on. Instead we got a minivan! Haha. All the cars have names and our hot ride was called "El Segundo."  After a practice lap around Woolloomooloo we hopped on the motorway and headed south, through Royal National Park and onto the Grand Pacific Drive, which weaves along the coastline to Wollongong. We got out of the car at a few vistas to walk around, watch the surfers and try to spy some whales. Then, we finished with lunch (burgers, no seafood) and drove back to the city.  It was a nice little day trip. I'd like to return to the Royal National Park and explore that some more.