Today a colleague at work called into a meeting from a room named Tarta de Santiago. I was curious, looked up Tarta de Santiago, and learned it was a pretty simple but tasty looking almond cake from middle ages, and that it represented Spain in Café Europe. My colleague claimed it was delicious. I baked the cake tonight. My colleague was right, the cake was delicious, it is definitely a keeper, hence recording the recipe here.
The knife-and-fork pattern is all I could come up with in a hurry, and it indicates how eager we were to dig into the cake. The cake tends to be decorated with a stencil of Cross of Saint James. I will try at the first opportunity.
I mostly followed the recipe from here, but made a few changes: I used honey instead of sugar and I reduced the amount from 200g to 150g. The cake was still plenty sweet, but the sweetness was not overpowering. I also added a tablespoon or two of Amareto to enhance the almond flavor. We liked the result.
Ingredients:
- 4 eggs
- 150g honey (the recipe I started with used 200g or 1 cup of castor sugar)
- 200g almond flour or ground almonds (2 cups)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- grated rind of one lemon (I used a Meyer lemon)
- Optional: 1-2 TBS Amaretto
- Powder sugar for dusting
- Preheat the oven to 350F (175C)
- Grease a 8 or 9 inch spring form cake pan with butter, and line the bottom with parchment paper.
- Crack the eggs into a bowl, and add the honey. Whisk until foamy and some air is incorporated. I used an electric handheld mixer.
- Add cinnamon, lemon rind, Amaretto if you are using it, and almond flour. Mix carefully with a whisk so that some bubbles remain in the mixture.
- Pour the mix into the cake pan, and bake for 30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
- Take the cake from the pan - I inverted it on a large plate, and let it cool for 10 minutes.
- In the mean while prepare a cross stencil, or whatever shape you will use for the decoration.
- Put the stencil on the cake and dust liberally with powder sugar.
- Carefully remove the stencil and the cake is ready to eat. I like it best at a room temperature.
- The cake can be stored covered at room temperature for a day or so.
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