Tarta de Santiago

My Nana has been asking me for a while to bake this cake. First, she saw a recipe for it in one of her Spanish magazines so she gave it to me. However, the directions were really vague like 'one glass of water' and didn't tell you what size cake tin to use! So I was scared. Then my Nana & Grandad got me the 1080 recipe book by Simone Ortega that is famous throughout Spain and I noticed there was a recipe in it for the Tarta de Santiago!

The cake itself originates from the Galicia region of Spain in the North. Although the name of it is 'tarta', it is not a pie or tart! It's called this because 'torta' is Galician for cake. The cake is the cake of St. James and usually a cross is stencilled on top of the cake with icing sugar. The cake contains lots of ground almonds which give it a slight nutty taste and dense texture and some lemon rind too which gives it a summery taste.

The recipe itself made a HUGE amount! It included 8 eggs, 500g almonds and 400g plain flour. However, once I made the mix up I realised it was way too much and it made 2 8-inch cakes. The recipe said it served 4-6 people so they must be a pretty greedy 4-6 people if they could eat two 8-inch cakes! Anyhow, next time I will halve the recipe and this is the recipe I've included below:

Ingredients

125g butter

4 eggs

250g caster sugar

200g plain flour

125ml water

250g ground almonds

Zest of one lemon

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180c and grease an 8-inch cake tin. 

2. Mix together the caster sugar & eggs until pale and fluffy. 

3. Add in the butter (at room temperature), water and flour and mix until the mixture is all incorporated. 

4. Finally add the ground almonds and zest and mix together. 

5. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake in the centre of the preheated oven for approx 40-50 mins or until the top is just turning golden and a skewer comes out clean. 

6. Leave cake to cool and then dust with icing sugar.