Tarta from Santiago, the original and easy recipe to make at home. Santiago’s cake is a surprisingly tender and with a delicious and delicate almond flavor. Personally, it is one of my favorite cakes and one of the ones I like to share the most, on the one hand, because it is the cake of my city, Santiago de Compostela and, outside of Galicia, it is not easy to taste authentic cakes from Santiago, so I love to make it known. On the other hand, because it is a cake with a series of qualities that make it perfect for almost any occasion; to begin with, and contrary to what it may seem from its appearance, it is a very different cake from the typical sponge cakes, so it always surprises and always pleases everyone. Is very easy and quick to prepare and also, always looks good since it does not carry any type of yeast or chemical impeller that could fail. It is made with ingredients that are very easy to find in any market or supermarket and that we can always have in our pantry for when we need them. It keeps perfectly from one day to the next, so we can prepare it in advance. Is a gluten free cake, so that we can share it with our celiac friends, with the only precaution, in this case, of avoiding buying ground almonds in bulk and using only ground almonds packaged with the “gluten-free” seal. And besides all this, can be customized for a special occasion in a very simple way. For personalization, instead of using the silhouette of the Cross of Santiago, we would only have to use the silhouette that we wanted according to each case, for example: the logo of a company, some initials, a number or any significant figure. It is true that if we personalize it, it would cease to be the Santiago cake itself, which must bear the Cross of Santiago, although this is somewhat forgivable if the occasion deserves it.
The authentic and traditional recipe for the Tarta de Santiago is registered in the Register of Protected Designations of Origin and Protected Geographical Indications as Tarta de Santiago (IGP), by means of Regulation (EU) No. 403/2010 of the Commission. According to the Registration Regulations, the Santiago cake must be shaped round, covered with icing sugar and with the Cross of the Order of Santiago as a sign of identity. The aroma will be typical of yolk and almond and, the typical almond flavor. As for the ingredients, the almond will be of the highest quality and will represent at least 33% by weight of the dough. The sugar will be refined and will also be present in at least a percentage of 33% of the weight of the dough. The amount of egg will be at least 25% of the dough and, according to culinary art, lemon zest, icing sugar, sweet wine, brandy or pomace brandy may be added.
The recipe for the Santiago cake that we present here respects the officially defined ingredients and their percentages, with the only exception of the percentage of sugar that is slightly lower than the official one. It must be taken into account, however, that the official recipe is intended for packaged cakes where sugar also has a long-term preservative function, which is not the case in our case. As you can see, with the amount of sugar in the recipe proposed here, the cake is exceedingly sweet and perfectly balanced in flavor. Let’s check it out!
recipe information
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- Preparation time: 10 minutes
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- Cooking time: 30 minutes
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- total time: 40 minutes
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- rations:8
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- Category: cake shop
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- type of cuisine: Galician
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- calories: 349 kcal per 100 g
Ingredients for the Santiago cake for 8 people
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- 250 g ground almonds (optionally, a part can be coarsely ground or diced)
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- 200 g of sugar (250 g if you want to respect the official percentage)
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- 5 eggs M
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- The zest of a lemon
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- Butter to grease the mold
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- Icing sugar to decorate
Necessary utensils:
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- A detachable mold of 24 cm in diameter
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- Template with the silhouette of the Cross of Santiago for cakes
How to make the cake of Santiago
First of all, we preheat the oven to 180 °C. Grease a removable mold with butter and grate the lemon with a classic-style grater, one of those with a star-shaped surface. These types of graters are the ones that best extract the essence of the citrus skin. Unlike other graters that extract tiny strips from the surface of citrus fruits, star-shaped graters completely break the oily vesicles in the citrus rind, which are the ones that contain the essential oils and, therefore, the aroma that we receive. interested in pastry
In a large bowl, combine the eggs with the sugar flavored with the lemon zest and beat with an electric whisk until the mixture has lightly whitened.
We incorporate the ground almonds into the bowl and integrate it, carefully, with some manual rods.
We transferred the mixture to the mold that we had greased and baked at 180 °C with heat up and down, for 30 minutes. We place the mold directly on the rack, and this, in the lower-middle part of the oven (for example, in a 5-slot oven, we will place the rack in the second slot starting from the bottom). We must watch the baking, especially during the last minutes and if we see that the surface of the cake is browning excessively, we turn off the upper heat.
Let the cake cool completely before decorating it, inside the mold, for an hour.
Easy preparation summary
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- Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Grease a removable mold with butter and grate the lemon
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- Mix the lemon zest with the sugar
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- Combine the eggs with the flavored sugar and beat with an electric whisk
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- Add the ground almond and integrate with some manual rods
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- Bake for 30 minutes, at 180 °C, heat up and down, and pan on the oven rack at medium low height
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- Let cool for an hour before decorating
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- Place the silhouette of the Cross of Santiago on the cake and sprinkle its entire surface with icing sugar. Carefully remove the cross. serve and enjoy
