Dessert Atlas · Dessert
Tarta de Santiago
- Easy
- 60 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, warm spice humming through the middle, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 250g ground almonds, the cake entire; there is NO flour, and there never was
- 250g sugar; 5 eggs
- Zest of 1 lemon + ½ tsp cinnamon; 1 tbsp sweet wine or brandy, optional and traditional
- Butter for the tin only (23cm)
- The stencil: a Cross of Saint James (print one) and icing sugar for the emblem
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg · nuts · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Whisk eggs and sugar 3 min until pale and slightly thickened: this is the only lift the cake gets. 3 min
- Fold in almonds, zest, cinnamon, wine; the batter is dense and proud of it.
- Bake 175°C, 30–35 min until deep gold and a skewer comes out with moist crumbs; cool fully in the tin: almond cakes firm as they cool. 35 min
- Lay the cross stencil on top; snow icing sugar over; lift to reveal the emblem. Serve in slim wedges with sherry or coffee.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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