Tarta de Santiago — Print Recipe

A moist, dense almond cake from Galicia with a tender crumb perfumed with lemon zest and cinnamon, famously decorated with a powdered sugar stencil of the Cross of Saint James.

Ingredients

250g ground almonds
200g sugar
4 eggs
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp ground cinnamon
Butter for greasing
Powdered sugar for decoration

Instructions

1 Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease a 24cm round cake tin and line the base with parchment.
2 Beat eggs and sugar together until pale and thick, about 5 minutes.
3 Fold in ground almonds, lemon zest, and cinnamon gently until just combined.
4 Pour batter into prepared tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean.
5 Cool completely in the tin. Turn out and place a Cross of Saint James stencil on top. Dust with powdered sugar, then carefully remove stencil.

Did You Know?

By Galician law, a true Tarta de Santiago must contain at least 33% almonds and cannot contain flour — any cake with flour cannot bear the name.