¡Viva España!

Today I’m baking Tarta de Santiago or St. James’ Cake! This is an almond, lemon, and cinnamon cake from Galicia in the Northwest of Spain.

Like most of the sweets on this list, there seems to be dispute as to how to make a ‘true’ Tarta de Santiago. It would appear that there are two ways to make this cake; one way is to make a pastry and top it with a filling, the second is to make one homogenous cake mixture and bake that. Putting my Spanish to good use, I researched this cake on various Spanish blogs and websites. Most of these websites used the latter method of making it, but I also discovered another dispute about this sweet. The cake is made with ground almonds, sugar, eggs, cinnamon and lemon zest however some recipes include a small amount of flour. There’s an argument out there that a true Tarta de Santiago contains no flour, so the cake presently in the oven is flour-free!

The cake is dusted with icing sugar with an imprint left on the cake from a cut-out of St. James’ cross, so I guess I’d better start making one!