It’s the Epiphany!! It may be hard to envision a sought-after follow-up to Christmas, but I assure you, my brother and I waited past the wrapping paper cleanup, past the adult’sNew Year’s debacles and nearly another week, every year, for this last hoorah of the holiday season. The Epiphany celebrates the arrival of the Three Kings to Jesus’s birthplace, bringing with them presents and leaving with the glory of spreading the word to the world of His arrival. In practice, French families, neighbors and friends gather around a table and this galette, golden paper crowns at the ready and little hands clutched with anticipation. The youngest child would place themselves, blindfolded, under the table and announce who would get which piece of the galette. Nestled within the flaky layers of this tart is a small token to represent baby Jesus (I’m old enough to remember this as a ceramic, tooth-cracking statuette), usually an almond or piece of dried fruit. The child who finds the baby in their piece receives the glorious distinction of being crowned King or Queen for the day, choosing a co-reigner.
Ingredients
GALETTE
1lbpuff pastryall butter is best, or click here for recipe to make your own rough puff pastry for best results
4ozroom-temperature buttersalted butter is lovely here! 112g
1/2cupgranulated sugar100g
1cupalmond flour120g
2eggs
1/2tspkosher salt
1tspvanilla extract
1/2tspalmond extract
EGG WASH
1egg yolk
1tspmilk or cream
Instructions
ROUGH PUFF PASTRY
Follow our master pie dough recipe and chill the dough for one hour after making it. Lightly flour your counter and roll your dough out into a rectangle about 24”by 8”. Fold the rectangle into thirds, as though you were folding a letter prior to placing it in an envelope. Wrap, chill for another 30-45 minutes and repeat. Chill the dough at least another hour before diving it into two 8 oz pieces.
GALETTE
Preheat oven to 375F.
If you are using store-bought dough, unfold it and, using a pair of scissors or pizza cutter, trim your dough to into two 10”circles. If you are using your own dough, weigh out two 8-oz pieces and roll them out. Once rolled out into circles, freeze while you prepare your dough.
To make your filling, place the butter, sugar and almond flour in the bowl of a stand or hand-held mixer. Cream until homogenous. Add the eggs, salt and extracts slowly, scraping well as you go, until a smooth paste forms.
Whisk the egg yolk and milk together for your egg wash and set aside. Remove your dough from the freezer and place one circle on a parchment-paper lined cookie sheet. Lightly brush just the outside edge of this circle with your egg wash, about 1” all around. Mound the filling over the center of the circle, leaving about 1-½” all around the edges uncovered. For a traditional experience, place an edible fève of some kind (dried piece of fruit, cocoa bean, nut..) into the filling.
Place the second circle over the filling and press lightly all around the edges of the dough to seal it well. Brush the egg wash over the dough and, using a paring knife, score a decorative pattern over the egg wash. We find it helpful to pierce a few tiny holes here and there within the scoring to allow some steam from the filling to escape.
Bake for about 30 minutes, or until an even, golden color appears throughout.