Thursday, January 3, 2013

French Breakfast - Epiphany Style

As I've mentioned every January, just as the rest of the western world is dieting, the French launch into a fantastic range of cakes to celebrate Epiphany - the coming of the Three Kings!
This year, as terms doesn't start again until January 7th, I realised that I'd have time to try out at least one recipe - the Couronne des Rois, which is the southern French equivalent of the Galette des Rois that I made last year. The Couronne is based on a brioche recipe, which I've never tried before. I was stunned at how much butter there is in brioche dough! I used this recipe, and it worked OK, although my fierce oven rather over-cooked the crust. It was nice enough, but my food processor (advised to beat the dough) isn't really up to the job. I think I'll look for a bread machine recipe next year! I also have the puff pasty kit to make a Galette des Rois in the fridge, although I've noticed that they've somehow left out the promised crown and fève - not sure if I can be bothered to go back to complain or not... Son 2 has a great collection from previous years, and I usually 'borrow' his!

5 comments:

magsmcc said...

Oh thank you so much for this, Floss! We have a church worker coming to stay for five weeks and she arrives on Saturday- I had wondered about doing an Epiphany cake thing to welcome her instead of kings! Or we could just call her la reine Charlotte! I'm going to investigate all the links. Sounds much more fun than actually cleaning her room! I emailed everyone I knew who had age appropriate language learners, but have had absolutely no response. Typical British attitude to langues vivantes! If your student would be interested in little epistles from Strawberry Land, coloured in and who knows what, we'd be glad to send her some English in return for some nice new French? And she wouldn't even have to hear our Northern Irish accents!

Elderberry-Rob said...

I haven't heard of epiphany cakes and kings - why do we British diet in January? the coldest time of the year when our bodies need to put on some fat! I think the French are far more sensible. Betty

Fat Dormouse said...

And after the galettes des rois come the bugnes before Lent!! It's not a good time to try to lose weight!!

Sue said...

My family would definitely like this breakfast! It looks delicious. My eldest son and his girlfriend did have a go at making a puff pastry version last year (before Christmas)but sadly without a crown and feve.

Winkel's Crazy Ideas said...

Your breakfast sounds really interesting, and oh how lovely to hear that there are some people out there who aren't dieting! The whole of Norway is working out and trying new diets like mad....a few weeks...then it's all forgotten...same story every year :-) sighing. Business as usual here...no pigging out and no dieting :-). Enjoy your celebrations and the good food. I seem to remember hearing about epiphany, but don't know anything else about it. Happy New Year, blessings Pam