For this week’s team meeting, I made a cake I really enjoyed while I was on holidays; I spent time in Spain and particularly in the north of Spain, tarta de Santiago is served everywhere. It is often decorated with the cross of St James and is thus associated with the Camino trail.

The cake is so easy to make and should only be about 2-2.5 cm high. Although rarely served with ice-cream, cream or yoghurt in Spain, it could be, to make it more of a dessert.

The recipe is taken from the Spanish-food.org web site.

Stencils of the St James cross are readily available from several web pages.

 

Ingredients

250 g crushed raw almonds or almond meal

250 g caster sugar

½ tsp ground cinnamon

Lemon zest of one lemon

5 eggs

Icing sugar to sprinkle

 

2. Preheat oven to 175°C (less for a fan forced oven, 160°C) and grease and line a 22cm springform cake tin.
3. Place all the ingredients, except the eggs, in a bowl and mix well with a fork.
4. Add eggs and mix well with a spoon only until all ingredients are blended – do not whisk.
5. Pour the mixture into the cake tin.
6. Bake, in the middle of the oven, for approximately 50 minutes or until the surface of the cake is golden.
7. Allow the cake to cool in the tin.
8. When the cake is cold, remove from the tin; place the St James cross stencil in the middle of the top of the cake and then using a sieve sprinkle the icing sugar evenly over the top of the cake. Remove the stencil carefully.

Tips

1. I used large sized eggs