Tarta de Santiago - St James Cake

This tart is from the North West of Spain (Galicia), it is made in honor of their patron St James whose remains are buried in Santiago de Compostela and has a really important pilgrim route.
I ate this cake lots of times but never cook it before and  as I could not find any recipe in my Spanish cooking books I made a research on line and found one that I really like, I was quite surprised to know that this cake has no flour, milk or butter, so if you use vegetable margarine to grease the tin people with dairy intolerance can eat it.

You will need:

250g of ground almonds
250g of white sugar
4 eggs
1  grated lemon grind
1tsp of ground cinnamon
Dusting sugar for decoration
23cm tin

The recipe I found says just to put the rind of half lemon, I put the whole grated lemon rind just because I do really like lemon, you can choose.

We pre-heat the oven at 200C and grease the tin.

Put the ground almond, the  grated lemon grind and the cinnamon together in a bowl and stir until combine.

In another bowl put the sugar and the eggs and cream them using a manual whisker, do not use an electric whisker because we do not want to add too much air to the mix.

Once we have the eggs creamed we start adding the almond mix slowly and combine it with a silicon spatula until it is homogeneous.

Now we pour the mix into the tin and put it in the oven, just after we do this, we change the oven temperature to 180C and bake it for about 30 minutes, check that it is cook properly before you take it out.

We put it to cool down on a rack and wait a few minutes before we remove the cake from the tin. Once it is cold we decorate with dusting sugar, the St James cake has a cross on top of the cake, I looked for it on line, printed it, cut it and used it to decorate my cake, if you do not want to do it, just sprinkle the dusting sugar on top of the cake.

And now just enjoy :)

 Photos by Jorge Deepsea

3 CHOCOLATES LAYERED CAKE

This is a really easy to do cake, the only tricky part is allowing the chocolate to cool down before pouring.

You will need:

175g of white chocolate
175g of milk chocolate
175g of dark chocolate
1L of double cream
0.5L of milk
21g of gelatine powder
125g of white sugar
200g of biscuits
80g of butter
23cm cake tin

First of all we make the cake base with the biscuits and the butter, we grind the biscuits and mix them with the melted butter and press the mix on the base of the tin, like you do for a cheesecake, we allow it to cool down a bit.

Meanwhile the base is cooling down, we put the cream and the milk together and stirr. We take 0.5L and we put it in a pan, add the white chocolate and the gelatine powder, heat it up until it boils, don't forget to stirr so it doesn't stick to the pan. We wait a few minutes and we pour it on the cake base. Now we wait until it is set and cold, so cold that we can draw lines with a fork on the surface, this way the next layer would not slip.

Once it is cold we do the same for the milk chocolate but we add 50g of white sugar, and then 75g for the dark chocolate.

Once is cold remove from the tin and enjoy :)

The original recipe is made with powder rennet (Cuajada Royal) that is uses for aa really popular dessert in Spain (Cuajada), but it is really difficult to find in the UK so I just swap it for gelatine and turned out beautifully.

Photos by Jorge Deepsea :)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

To be fair, I have to say that I baked these cookies by mistake, what I was trying to do were chocolate chip scones, but I think I didn't add enough baking powder so they didn't rise as they should, but as I said when I was introducing myself, sometimes my bakes go wrong and totally inedible, this time the cookies turn out good though,. What I've got were cookies with a softy inside so they were a nice and tasty mistake. If you want to try them yourself you will need:

225g flour
2tsp baking powder
50g dark chocolate chips
50g caster sugar
1/2tsp salt
50g butter
150ml milk
some extra milk for glazing

First of all, grease a baking sheet and pre-heat the oven at 220ºC - Gas 7.

Sift the flour with the salt into a bowl and add the cold butter, you have to rub in the butter, you can do it with your hands, I never do it like that because it is really easy to melt the butter with your fingers when you are working it, what I use is a pastry blender, it is really handy and I use it lots because I make my own puff-pastry. If you don't have one, you can use a normal butter knife, it will take you a bit longer but you will not melt the butter. You have to cut the butter in small pieces, like lentils.
Once you've done that add the rest of the ingredients and work them to a soft and sticky dough.
Now all you have to do is roll it and cut it, I cut it about 0.5cm thick with a round cookie cutter, then re-roll the trimmings and re-cut until you shape all the dough. Remenber to add some flour to your working surface and to the rolling pin.

Place the cookies on the prepared baking tray, brush them with some milk and put them into the oven. They will be ready in about 10 minutes.

So if you want to try my chocolate chip cookies a.k.a chocolate chip scones you have the recipe.

By the way, if you like the photos they are made (the nice ones) by Jorge Deepsea Photography, the no so nice ones are made by me :)

Carbayones

They were quite difficult for me to make, it took me 3 times to get them right but totally worth the extra effort.

They take their name from a city in the north-west of Spain called Oviedo, people who live there are called "Carbayones" furthermore a Carbayu is how we call oak-trees in Asturias and Oviedo is Asturias' capital.

For this recipe you will need puff pastrie, I make my own one because it is not difficult to make, it tastes better and I like to make everything from scratch, the dowside is that you have to start the day before so you have to plan it in advance. I will post the puff pastrie recipe later.

You will need:

0.5Kg of puff pastrie

For the filling:

200g of grounded almonds
4 egg yolks
2 egg whites
1 lemon zest
200g of white sugar
0.5 cup of sherry liquor

Egg yolk cream

4 egg yolks
4Tsp of water
100g of white sugar

Glaze

400g of dusting sugar
100g of water

Fist of all you have to line the special molds with the puff pastrie, these molds are longer than the individual tart molds but they are less wider, I bought them the last time I was in Spain, if you can not get them, don't worry you can use the tart molds.

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC- Gas 4

For the filling you just have to mix all toguether in a bowl.

Fill the pastrie shells and put them in the oven until the pastrie is golden, if the filling is getting dark cover them with a big tin, you probably will have to do it so be ready because takes longer for the pastrie to be done  and you don't want the filling to get burn. when the puff pastrie is done take them out of the oven and allow them to cold down a little and remove them from the molds.

For the egg yolk cream you have wisk the egg yolks and put them on a side, afterwards put the sugar and the water into a pot and heat it up to hard ball so you will have to use a sugar thermometer, once you get the temperature allow it to cold down just a little and pour it over the egg yolks, do it very slowly meanwhile you wisk. when you have the cream, spread it over the top filling with a knife, making an even layer. Leave them to cold down compleatly until the surface is not sticky anymore.

Now all you have to do is the glaze and it is very simple, just mix the dusting sugar and the water and pour it over the carbayones, I changed this part of the recipe because I cannot get this part right, you are supposed to heat up the sugar to hard ball, I tried this twice and didn't work so I decided to use a simpler glaze that instead.

I know this recipe looks quite long but it was quite easy to do once I changed the glaze part, that was diving me crazy. If you have any tips for that glaze I will be happy to hear them :)

By the way I made meringues with all the egg whites that I didn't use in this recipe.

Enjoy :)

SPANISH MADELEINES / LEMON MUFFINS

Growing up in Spain I didn't hear about muffins and cupcakes until I was almost in my 20's, for me this sweet and perfect bake name was and still is madeleine, it's not like the french version (that I didn't know either) and it is perfect for breakfast. This version is made with olive oil so it is really fluffy and moist, if you have a non dairy diet you can swap the full fat milk for rice or soy milk with no problem. You re going to need:

3 eggs (L)
250g of sugar
325g of cake flour
250ml of olive oil
250ml of full fat milk
16g of baking powder
1 lemon (grated)
pinch of salt


We have to separate the yolks and whites, the whites we have to whip them to soft picks and the yolks we have to cream them with the sugar until the mixture becomes pale, after creaming the yolks and still beating them we start adding the oil and the milk really slowly until they are perfectly integrated.
Now we add the grated lemon and the mix of baking powder, flour and salt. We beat it for about 3min. After that we add the whites and we mix all together very slowly with a silicon spoon o similar, then we cover it and leave it to rest for one hour.
Preheat the over to 200C, pour the dough into the madeleine or muffin cases and put in the oven for 5min, after that change the temperature to 180C and bake for another 15min or until golden.

Hope you like this recipe, I made this one a few times and works perfectly every time :)

Apple Tart

This is why everything started for me, the apple tart, so easy, so tasty and so difficult to find in Scotland, at least this one, with a base with some lemon, a custard filling and an apple top, there is nothing that makes me think about home like this. Takes 2 hours from start to finish, but I do everything myself, even the glaze on top. Hope you enjoy it.

For the tart shell: 
100g of butter
2 eggs
2 Tbsp of white sugar
Flour (as much as you need)
1 lemon (zest)

Filling :
1/2 l of milk
4 Tbsp of white sugar
1 lemon (peel)
2 Tbsp of cornflour

Top layer:
3/4Kg of apples
1cup of brandy (optional)
1 cinnamon stick
300g of white sugar

 Peel the apples and core and cut them in thin slices, put the whit the cognac, a cup of water and the sugar over a low heat until soft. For the filling just make a custard and use the cores and peels cook them with water for one hour, strain it and mesure the liquid, now add the same amount of sugar and make a syrup. For the tart shell, put all the ingredients together, mix them and start adding flour until you get a soft dough, roll it and put it on a greased tin, fill it with the custard and place the apples on top, like a circle, place the tart in the oven until bake, once is out using a cooking brush paint the apples with the syrup. Now wait until cold to it it... If you can :)