The English Christmas has many virtues, but longevity is not one of them. Our traditions extend about as far as the Boxing Day leftovers lunch, and from then on the best you can hope for is that bingeing your Christmas chocolates still counts as festive fun.
That’s probably part of the appeal of the galette des rois, a.k.a. Epiphany cake or king cake, the French take on the common theme of a dessert to mark the visit of the three Kings and the unambiguous end to the Christmas calendar.
Wikipedia tells me that England too once had its own take on king cake, eaten on Twelfth Night and complete with a bean hidden inside, whoever found it chosen to be that night’s Lord or Lady of Misrule. We were fortunate enough to have the Victorians come along and put an end to such frivolity, declaring that twelve days of Christmas was about eleven days too many. So now we’re left to stretch our consumption out for a few blurry days until New Year’s, when January 1st rolls up with abstinence, diet plans, and gym memberships in tow.
I suspect the French aren’t immune to the January health kick, but at least the galette feels perfectly timed to ease the burden. Landing each year on January 6th, it gives you the chance to reward yourself for one good week and accept that, actually, the New You likes cake just as much as the old one did after all.
I first encountered galette des rois a couple of years back, when London was in the early days of its love affair with the frangipane-stuffed puff pastry pie.
These days there’s hardly a bakery in the city that doesn’t go all-in on galette, some for the 6th, most for the whole month, rightly recognising that there’s not much else to look forward to this time of year. I can’t say I’ve eaten enough to begin ranking London’s finest, but this year I did make the effort to work through a trio - strictly in the name of journalistic research, mind.
I started with a slice from Jolene in Newington Green, snatched during a lunch break in the first dreary week back at work, chosen chiefly by virtue of being a) local, and b) actually open. By the time I got to it the pastry was a touch dry, but it was a generous wedge, and the light filling held a hint of almond without falling into marzipan territory.
My second galette was altogether more traditional: I ate it on the 6th, for one thing, and it was actually cooked and served by a French person. A coin nestled inside was intended to confer luck on the recipient (in this case the baker, utterly unsuspiciously), and slices were allocated at random by the youngest member of the group, sitting under the table while shouting people’s names after what we were all assured was the “traditional French song.” A reluctant toddler meant that this solemn duty instead fell to a 26-year-old, who looked positively thrilled.
Like all the best home baking, this galette was preceded by thirty minutes or so of cursing and complaint from the kitchen, but what amounted from it all was actually pretty magnificent: a voluminous pillow of puff still steaming from the oven; the frangipane dense, rich, almond-y to the hilt.
But the best was yet to come. In a fit of excess I ordered an entire cake from Populations, a micro-bakery run by the mostly self-taught George Fuest out of his home in Spitalfields. I’m not sure where I’d first heard of Populations, and it was mostly by chance that I finally got round to joining Fuest’s WhatsApp mailing list in late December, not even realising that I’d lined myself up perfectly for galette season.
I duly shuffled into town to collect the goods, waiting for a few minutes outside an unassuming Fournier Street door until a slightly floury Fuest appeared, pastry in hand. Each of his full-size galettes - he makes teeny solo portion pastries too - comes carefully boxed together with a golden paper crown for whoever finds the whole almond hidden inside.
Pro tip: eat most of a full-size cake by yourself and your odds go up dramatically.
This was the king of my king cakes. An immaculate patisserie spiral of inverted puff pastry, its layers tight rather than expansive, crisp but never dry. The frangipane filling is darker than most, its flavour warm, nutty, the almond notes mellowed, caramelised, softened by the crème patissiere. I carved myself a healthy slab, warmed in the oven, to eat while I watched Arsenal lose an FA Cup tie; I consoled myself with a second sliver after the whistle.
I don’t know how long London’s Epiphany obsession will last, but it already feels like an important new calendar marker in my own life. It’s a brief respite in January, a reminder that your resolutions and aspirations are only as important as the joy they bring you, and that sometimes there’s just as much happiness to be found in a wedge of laminated pastry.
I’ve revamped my workout routine, upped my intermittent fasting, finally finished one of those politics books gathering dust on my bookcase. And I’ll keep those good habits up through January, and hopefully beyond, all the easier for having a slice (or three) of galette along the way.