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The King of cakes

Guest post by Read_and_dream

In France there is a tradition come Epiphany to eat a galette des rois, a "king cake", in which to commemorate the visit of the magi. Nowadays this is a lot more commercial than religious, just like Christmas presents and Easter eggs, and for the whole month of January, and well into February, the delicious almondy cakes are proudly displayed in every boulangerie, with a fève hidden inside.  Fève literally means "broad bean", but nowadays constitutes a little porcelain figurine, often a character from a recent film, or occasionally a religious figure.  The tradition goes that the youngest person present for the eating of the cake has to sit under the table and decide in which order the slices are distributed, in order to avoid cheating. The person who ends up with the fève becomes king or queen, gets to wear a paper crown, and supposedly order everyone around for the rest of the day. The galette is surprisingly easy to make (if you buy ready-made puff pastry), and we used French Guy Cooking's youtube video to guide us (see below for link). While it could have perhaps done with a bit longer in the oven, and a bit more egg glaze to get the traditional burnished look, it came out looking (and tasting) pretty good, if I do say so myself. In our case we didn't have a fève, so we used a 10 cent piece (cleaned first in boiling water), and Martin was the lucky winner, thus getting to select which film we watched that evening.

Here is the recipe that we used:


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