Bica mantecada, traditional Galician recipe

My summers in Orense when I was a child always ended in the same way, in Castro Caldelas loading the trunk of the Bicas car mantecadas for the whole family. The flavors of childhood mark us and when I started to love cooking I wanted to recreate this cake de dense and compact crumb.

The difficulty of finding beef lard, an ingredient present in the original recipe, made it difficult to come up with an "exact" recipe. However, of all the ones I have tried, this is without a doubt the one that gets the closest. Give it a try! It is a delicious dessert to accompany the coffee and it keeps wonderfully for days, even gaining in texture after a couple of days.

Ingredients

1 large pan (18x28x7'5 cm mold) or 2 small
For the ferment

• 250 g. strength flour
• 180 ml of water
• 2 g. fresh baker's yeast
• A pinch of salt

Final mass:

• 250 g. of butter
• 400 g. of sugar
• 250 g. ferment
• 8 eggs
• 250 g. wheat flour
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 50 gr of sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle

Ingredients

We start by preparing the ferment. To do this, we mix all the mentioned ingredients, paying attention so that the yeast dissolves completely in the water. Once mixed, we form a ball that we put in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. We let it rest for at least two hours.

After that time, we preheat the oven at 180º with heat up-down.

With the mixer, we whip the butter and sugar until we get a white cream. Then we add the ferment in small pieces and we knead until they are fully integrated with the dough hooks of the food processor. It is very important that there are no lumps; take care in this step.

Next, we incorporate the eggs one by one. When the last egg is integrated, add the sifted flour and lemon zest and mix until obtaining a homogeneous dough.

We prepare the mold, lining it with greaseproof paper. We pour the dough, smooth the surface and sprinkle with the sugar and cinnamon mixture.

We bake at 180º for 50 minutes approximately or until toothpick comes out clean. We take out and let cool completely on a rack.

Notes

With a cool place the bica will hold you up to a week. I particularly like it more after 1 or 2 days than fresh.

As you will see, I have not paid much attention when lining the mold. Do it if you want the bica to be more uniform and "square", without too many folds in the corners.

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