Sam's First Coca de San Juan (St John's Flat Cake)

Continuing with our Spanish thing, there was one thing that certainly caught Sam's eye (and his stomach). Every morning, we would peruse the delicious things on offer in the local bakeries, and inevitably, Sam would almost always ask for the same thing. Decorated with a colourful array of dried fruits, Coca de San Juan is a flat sweet bread that is traditionally eaten as part of the feast on the eve of St John's Day on 24th of June, as part of the Spanish midsummer celebrations (just after the summer solstice). It could be that they were prevalent because we were there just a matter of weeks after this date, or maybe they are available all year round, but whichever it is, it was certainly delicious.

We used a simple recipe from a little Catalan cookbook we bought in one of the tourist shops:

Ingredients:

300 g bread flour

125 g softened butter

3 eggs

40 g of sugar or more to taste

1 sachet of baking yeast

a pinch of salt

For the decoration:

100 g of glazed fruits such as candied orange slices, glacé cherries, angelica

20 g pine nuts

50 g sugar

1 glass of muscatel or other sweet dessert wine

1. Leave the dried fruits to soak in the sweet wine for 2 hours

2. Mean while, rub the butter into the flour, then combine with the remaining ingredients to make a bread dough. I usually combine the butter and flour by hand, then add everything to a bread machine on the dough setting. Add some milk if the dough is too dry, and some flour if it's too wet. The dough can also be flavoured with lemon zest or anise for a more traditional flavour

3. Cover the dough and leave to rest for 4 hours (yes, the recipe really says 4 hours!) until it is doubled in size.

4. Stretch the dough out into a flat cake oval shape, but try to avoid knocking all the air out of it. Spread the fruits on top, then sprinkle with the pine nuts and the sugar. Leave to rest in a non-draughty place for another 30 minutes, during which time you can preheat the oven to 180 oC (I found this was too hot for my fan oven, so I took it down to 160 oC)

5. Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown

6. See how long it lasts when it is fresh and warm from the oven!