If you haven’t already been to Australia, you probably don’t know about the coffee culture in the country. Australians love sitting on a café terrace with a quality coffee to hand. The different climates from east to west also affords locals a wealth of exotic and tasty vegetables and fruits.
But that’s not the delicacies we want to talk about in this post. Here are the less-healthy Australian delicacies that every visitor or new arrival needs to try – at least once.
1. Tim Tams
Tim Tams are a chocolate biscuit that are like gold dust in Australian family homes. Once the packet is opened, it doesn’t take long for them to disappear.
There is more than one variation of a Tim Tam, such as dark chocolate, mint, choc raspberry, salted caramel – and the list goes on. The most identical biscuit to a Tim Tam in the UK would be a Penguin biscuit, but most Australians and British expats agree that a Tim Tam is better.
You can eat Tim Tams like any other biscuit, but in Australia they also have a special technique known as the Tim Tam Slam. To do the Tim Tam Slam, you need to bite both ends off the Tim Tam and use it as a straw to suck up your hot drink (tea or coffee) for a few seconds. This makes the inside of the Tim Tam melt and taste even better. FYI, this is also achievable with a Twix!
2. Vegemite
Vegemite is a spread developed in Melbourne back in the 1920s. It is made with a combination of spices, leftover yeast extract and vegetable additives. It is usually spread on toast as a breakfast meal or is used as a sandwich filler. If the packaging of Vegemite looks familiar to Marmite in the UK, there is some distant connection between the two. The only difference is that most Australians love Vegemite and very few hate it.
For foreigners, Vegemite still divides opinion. Maybe if you are not brought up with it, you cannot get used to its strong taste…
3. Lamington Cake
A Lamington is an Australian delicacy consisting of two square sponge cakes glazed in chocolate sauce and desiccated coconut with a layer of cream in between. Some variations use strawberry jam in between instead. Historians believe that Lamington Cake was named after the Governor of Queensland or his wife, but the exact origins have not been proven.
The Lamington Cake can be a sophisticated dessert, but it can also be bought in a simpler form as a quick snack from supermarkets. It divides opinion between Australian visitors much less than Vegemite, and there is even a National Lamington Day on the 21st of July.
Don’t forget to try these three famous Australian delicacies when you next visit down under!
