Coca de llardons is a flat pastry cake made with eggs, sugar, pork crackling (llardons) and pine nuts, which is traditionally eaten around Carnival time, to get people ready for fasting during Lent.

In times gone by you could only find them prior to Lent, especially from Dijous Gras (Fat Thursday) onwards, when fatty dishes and over-the-top eating is the order of the day. But now you can get them all year round and they form part of the great variety of sweet products eaten on the most popular feast days, such as Sant Joan and Sant Pere. They are usually accompanied with sweet wine, Moscatell, Malvasia or cava.

Method

Ingredients: 4 eggs, 100 g sugar, 200 g pork crackling, 1/2  kg flour, 100 g pine nuts, 100 g baker's yeast, 20 dl oil, a glass of anisette and water.

Mix the 3 eggs, oil, 100 g sugar and the yeast, dissolved in a little warm water.
Slowly add the flour until it forms a smooth pastry dough.
Mix in the crushed crackling and anisette.
Spread the dough out on a baking tray coated in oil.
Brush it with whisked egg, spread out the pine nuts and sprinkle the rest of the sugar over it.
Leave it to ferment and rise.
Put the pastry in the oven for about 25 minutes at 180 ˚C.