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Tarta de Santiago (Flourless Galician Almond Cake)

Name: Tarta de Santiago (Flourless Galician Almond Cake)
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h 5 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Spanish
Ingredients: 250 g ground almonds; 250 g sugar; 5 eggs; 1 lemon lemon zest; 0.5 tsp ground cinnamon; 10 g butter; 2 tbsp icing sugar

The almond cake of Galicia. Ground almonds and sugar in equal weights are mixed with eggs and baked, and the top is dusted with icing sugar around a stencil of the Cross of Saint James. There is no flour; the eggs hold it together.

Steps

Heat the oven to 180°C. Butter a 22cm round tin and line the base with paper.
⏲ 5 min
Whisk the eggs and sugar for 5 minutes, until pale and thick.
⏲ 5 min
Fold in the ground almonds, lemon zest and cinnamon until even. No flour goes in.
⏲ 2 min
Pour into the tin and bake 40-45 minutes, until the top is firm and golden.
⏲ 45 min
Let it cool completely in the tin before turning it out. Warm, it breaks easily.
⏲ 60 min
Cut a cross from paper, lay it in the centre, sift the icing sugar over, then lift the paper away carefully.
⏲ 2 min

Variations

With a pastry base. Some versions bake the mixture on puff or shortcrust pastry. The base is the only place flour goes.
With sweet wine or brandy. Some recipes add a spoonful instead of, or as well as, the lemon zest.
Tarta de Elche. Almost the same cake, made with flour.

Tips

No flour. The protected-indication rules say so.
Equal weights of almond and sugar.
Cool it completely before turning it out.
Whisk the eggs well. That foam is the only thing raising the cake.

More detail and the reasons why (2)

A cake held up by egg. Passatelli says "With no flour in it, the only thing holding it together is egg." The same goes here. With no gluten, the egg setting in the oven is the whole structure, which is why the cake breaks easily until it cools. The texture Spanish Wikipedia describes, slightly spongy and a little grainy, is what ground almond gives in place of flour.
The same ratio as a macaron. Macaron is "a ratio biscuit — equal weights of ground almonds and icing sugar". The macaron folds that mixture into meringue; this cake stirs it into whisked whole eggs. According to English Wikipedia, the protected indication requires at least 33% almonds, not counting the base.