So while I’m still not in a French class (gimme a break, it’s only a few days into the New Year, I’m working on it!) and feeling denser and dimmer by the day, I’m feeling pressured to share the things I’m actually learning here (and diminishing the need to refer to any other French culture blog… but to any of the authors of other French culture blogs, I can hear you sigh now and observe “Oh, her first Noël in France, that’s cute, I remember mine…”)

Anyway – sorry to get off track, I’ll get back on topic quickly because it involves desserts.

But basically I was only previously aware of Epiphany because I had heard of the Three Kings who came from “Orient-Ah” (or so I’ve sung for years), and their remains are now located in Cologne Cathedral… but that was about it. I never knew why the January 6th commemoration had anything to do with the Magi, but on further reading it seems that this was when they turned up bearing belated birthday gifts. Now this is something I can relate to – maybe I should adopt an Epiphany attitude to all birthdays, and feel comfortable about my tardiness rather than fret about it…

This holiday is celebrated in France with a specific type of cake called galette des rois. But let’s ease into things slowly.

Galette: at any other time of the year, this conjures up images of Brittany. Galettes are salty buckwheat flour crêpes or alternately ‘galettes bretonnes‘ shortbread biscuits, however…

Galette des rois: is what you get if you imagine the Magi went to Bethlehem via Brittany (stocking up on cider perhaps?), got inspired and fused some frankincense and myrrh exoticism with a Celtic staple, and voila! No, this isn’t the case at all, I’m just being silly. This “king’s cake” is puff-pastry and almond paste affair, made memorable by the inclusion of a…

Fève: which is literally a broad bean, but has morphed on this holiday to become a porcelain bean, or porcelain baby Jesus, or porcelain anything really. Can be collected, and can be designer (in Paris, of course dahling!)

Frangipane: a new word in my vocabulary – this is what I was sent to get from the bakery this morning (“but don’t I want a galette des rois?”). Asking for frangipane apparently ensures that the clueless foreigner gets the almond galette rather than the brioche galette. On further research (food, unbelievably, isn’t Guillaume’s strong point), it emerges that frangipane is an almond cream mix of sugar, butter and eggs, added with pastry cream to make it fluffy.

The galette des rois is traditionally divvied up by the youngest going under the table to allocate the slices of cake (so even if the fève is obviously in a piece, it is still fairly distributed). Whoever gets the piece with the fève can choose their king or queen. That person gets the golden cardboard crown that comes with the galette. Aww…