Making a Classic French Galette des Rois Is Easier Than You Think

Several years ago, I was a young pastry cook working the early morning shift when a fellow baker presented me with a slice of galette des rois—French kings’ cake—to enjoy with my cup of coffee. A layer of fragrant almond cream perfumed with rum was generously sandwiched between two layers of crisp, golden puff pastry, and, as is traditionally done in France, the baker had snuck a fève—a small bean, nut, or porcelain charm—into the filling. In northern France, families gather to enjoy galette des rois together on January 6 for Epiphany, which celebrates the three wise men, or the three kings, meeting baby Jesus. 

“According to tradition,” journalist Ajesh Patalay writes in the Financial Times, “the youngest and most innocent in the room (not always the same thing) climbs under the table and chooses who receives each slice.” Whoever receives the little trinket is monarch for the day. In southern France, the tradition is slightly different: Bakers prepare a gateau des rois with a dough similar to that of brioche, then top it with pearl sugar and candied fruit. (In French, galette refers to a round, flat pastry, while gateau typically refers to a risen cake.) The gateau is much closer to the colorful, cinnamon-scented confection eaten in New Orleans and throughout South Louisiana from Epiphany through carnival season’s culmination on Mardi Gras. 

Though galette des rois’ origins are murky, the pastry reportedly has roots in the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia. “Saturnalia was an occasion when many social hierarchies were subverted; in particular, enslaved people were given temporary freedom and invited to share cake with their enslavers,” the encyclopedia Britannica notes. “A mock king, known as the Saturnalicius princeps, was designated for the festival, usually by hiding a fava bean or a coin inside a cake.” Sometime during the Middle Ages, people began preparing the cake for Epiphany, a tradition that remains to this day. 

Many French families choose to purchase their galette des rois, but you will likely have to make your own if you don’t live in France or near a French bakery. Luckily it’s not difficult to prepare: All you need is some almond cream, which comes together quickly with the help of an electric mixer, and some store-bought puff pastry. Here’s how.

How to Make Galette des Rois: Key Techniques

Make a flavorful almond cream. Because galette des rois is so simple and gets its flavor from just two components—almond cream and puff pastry—it’s worth taking the time to make a truly delicious almond cream. Here, I use our contributor Zola Gregory’s almond cream, which gets its bold flavor from toasted almond flour and a blend of almond extract, vanilla extract, and brandy or rum. (You may see this type of almond cream called “frangipane” in other recipes, but frangipane is technically a combination of almond cream and pastry cream.)

Use an all-butter puff pastry. Making your own puff pastry from scratch is admirable, but there are good store-bought options that will do the trick. Just be sure to use puff pastry that’s made with butter, which will have a richer, more pleasant flavor than doughs made with soybean, canola, or other neutral oils. Dufour is one all-butter puff-pastry brand we like, and it’s what I used in my tests. 

Use an edible trinket. In France, it’s traditional to hide a dried bean or porcelain charm in the galette. Some bakeries even nestle a plastic figurine into the filling. Out of an abundance of caution, I prefer using a nut like an almond or hazelnut, which are completely edible and soften in the filling as the pastry cooks, minimizing the risk of choking. 

Keep the pastry as cold as possible. There’s plenty of chilling and freezing time in this recipe, and that’s no mistake. Keeping the galette cold does two things: It helps the gluten relax, which minimizes the risk of shrinkage when the pastry bakes. Chilling also ensures the butter stays firm. As the dough bakes, the butter melts, creating little pockets of steam that help the dough rise and set into crispy, flaky layers. 

Start your bake at a high temperature. For the flakiest galette, I start baking the pastry at a high temperature: 400ºF/205ºC. This may feel counterintuitive—after all, the goal up until this point was to keep the butter as cold as possible—but this is a technique many bakers use to help the butter in the pastry melt quickly, which creates the steam necessary for the crispy layers I mentioned above and helps the crust set.

With the tips above, you’ll be able to make a bakery-worth galette des rois. And even if you aren’t the lucky recipient of the fève, enjoying a slice of this pastry will certainly make you feel like royalty.

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