Ovar Sponge Cake 500g
Description
This is a conventual sponge cake which recipe is said to have been created in a convent outside Ovar city before the arrival of the 18th century.
Although firmly and authentically rooted in Ovar, it is widely enjoyed across the whole Portuguese territory – in fact, no serious party or celebration can be said to have happened without its presence –and even abroad, be it by expats, discriminating foreigners who source them at the best importers in their countries and visitors to Portugal who cannot resist taking a few back home with them.
But the Ovar Sponge Cake clearly stands out amongst all, and its recipe is said to have been created in a convent outside that city before the arrival of the 18th century, whereby the dough is kneaded with a special wooden spade for no less than two hours in bowls made of red clay before being placed in clay baking trays lined with linen paper and taken to an oven fired by wood and pine cones and twigs. It soon became synonymous with exceptional quality and taste, and began to be offered to visiting church preachers and other dignitaries as a welcome gift and also as a token of the importance they had and the esteem they were held. Also, the captains of the small “fragateiro” boats that worked as feeder vessels to the larger frigates that sailed into and from the Tagus River would offer them to the captains of said frigates as a means of garnering and maintaining their custom.
This delicious recipe was kept in the hands of just a few families from Ovar and its surroundings until 1950, when its production became more intensive, but without ever abandoning the key principles and tenets of the original one. It is said in Portugal that no party or celebration is complete without the presence of the Ovar Sponge Cake.
Ovar:
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