Epiphany.

My favorite part of the holidays has always been the food. Well, that and sleeping in but since I now have 3 children the only thing left is the food.
And what I love about the epiphany is the galette des rois, the king's galette. The puff pastry drips with butter and the dense filling smells of almonds and orange flower water. And then there is the feve, a little porcelain figurine that is hidden in the filling. It replaced the dried bean of old. The lucky person to find it is crowned king... or queen for the day.
The youngest person hides under the table and designates the person whom each slice is going to. Traditionally there is only one feve in the cake but nowadays a lot of families will put as many feves in the cake as there are children present.

Some people celebrate the epiphany the first Sunday of January like my sister . Others celebrate it on January 6th. And in France at least, numerous others celebrate it all month long. Like me.

Here is a recipe for the galette. Try it, it's very easy.

Galette des rois:

Enough puff pastry to cut 2 circles into
100g sugar
2 egg yolks
125g almond meal
1 tsp almond extract
1 tbsp orange flower water
75g butter

Mix the sugar and egg yolks until the mix is pale and makes a ribbon. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Spread onto one dough circle leaving 1 inch of space all around. Press the feves or a dried kidney beans slightly into the filling. Cover with the other circle of dough and press the edges together with a fork.
I always glaze my dough with cream or milk because our eggs come from our own chickens and they don't lay much in winter.