Galette Des Rois

When my daughter was living in France on exchange she was delighted to learn that the French serve this delicious galette on the 6th January as part of their New Year celebration.

It is not at all difficult to make, basically just puff pastry and ground almonds like a frangipani tart.  This recipe is from the lovely book ‘Pies & tarts’ by Stephane Reynaud that I received for my birthday.

When cooking this use the combi if you have one, otherwise use Fan Forced or ‘Supercook’ as some brands call it.  Refer to my function chart here.  As I mentioned in my curry puff recipe, nothing makes puff pastry ‘puff’ like a combi!  Be sure to preheat the oven tray for this.  If you have a combi that also has bottom element only you could do a further stage with 10 minutes bottom element as part of the cooking time.  This will ensure you have a beautiful cooked base.  Or, even better, if your combi (or oven) has a function with the fan and bottom element then use that for the complete baking time. You cannot ‘blind’ bake this galette.

Ingredients:

375g puff pastry
180g blanched almonds
180g castor sugar
180g unsalted butter
4 eggs

Method:

1. Preheat combi oven with the flat tray @ 180°C
2. Grease and flour a 20cm tart tin.  I used the traditional French ‘ring’ that doesn’t have a base but a normal tin is fine but try using it without its base (so with baking paper on the bottom only.  See step 6).  This really does help brown and cook the base.
3. Process the almonds with the sugar in a food processor until finely chopped.
4. Melt the butter, add it to the almond-sugar mix then incorporate 3 eggs.
5. Set aside the yolk of the remaining egg.
6. Roll out two thirds of the pastry to 3mm thick.  Tear off a piece of baking paper large enough for the tin to place your galette on.  As the tin is preheating in the oven, assemble the galette on the paper.  Place the pastry in the tin, allowing the edges to hang over.
7. Fill with the almond cream.
8. Glaze the edges with the reserved egg yolk.
9. Roll out remaining pastry and cover the pie, pressing the edges to seal.
10. Draw a rosette pattern on top using the tip of a knife.
11. Brush with egg wash.
12. Slide the galette on its paper onto the hot oven tray.  Place back into the oven and bake on Combination mode 180°C + 30% steam for 30-45 minutes until golden brown.