This wonderful lemony cake is not Spanish at all, I was given the recipe by an English cake-baking friend and had to try it with our Spanish lemon curd. The fact that it combines two of my favourite things – lemon curd, and almonds – makes it a regular in our house when friends visit. It does look rather indulgent and as it is best kept in the fridge, it gets eaten very quickly. I used our own lemon curd, but shop-bought will do the job just as well. For the cake:-
225g butter
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
½ tsp almond extract [or vanilla extract]
Finely grated rind of 1 ½ lemons
75g plain flour [we used gluten-free]
150g ground almonds
1½ tsp baking powder [we used gluten-free]
For the icing:-
200g mascarpone
100ml whipping cream [we used nata para montar]
2 tbsp icing sugar
2 tbsp lemon curd [plus more for spreading]
Handful of lightly toasted flaked almonds

Preheat the oven to 170F. Lightly butter two round 8 inch cake tins. 
First, prepare the wet ingredients. Beat the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, almond extract, and lemon rind.
Next, prepare the dry ingredients. Into a separate bowl, sift the flour. Stir in the ground almonds and baking powder until thoroughly combined. Now add the dry ingredients to the wet, folding in.
Spoon the mixture equally into the two tins, and level the tops. Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden, and just coming away from the sides of the tins. Leave to cool in the tins for 10 minutes, then remove from the tins and leave to cool on a cooling rack.
To make the icing, simply beat together all the icing ingredients. Spread the top of one cake with lemon curd, and half the icing. Place the second cake on top, and spread the rest of the icing on top. Swirl a little more lemon curd through the icing. Sprinkle the top with lightly toasted flaked almonds. 

If you want to bake another cake, try one of these:-
A cake to make on a cool afternoon… cherry cake
A sweet and sour cranberry cake
Oh so sticky… chocolate flapjack

5 to remember
la receta – the recipe
indulgente – indulgent
como bien – just as well
el extraco de almendra – almond extract
un tazón – a bowl

I’m not sure whose recipe this is, but the most reliable cake book we use is ‘Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book’ [UK: BBC Books]

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
An indulgent English cake in #Spain #recipe via @Spanish_Valley http://wp.me/p3dYp6-1RB

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