It has been a while since I last attempted a galette de rois, and unlike the last time, where I had to fast track making one to get something posted in time for Epiphany, this time, I was able to get a little more prep done. A galette de rois is a French cake, made with puff pastry and an almond filling. It’s called the King’s Cake, because there is a little clay baby figure or a large almond usually hidden in the cake itself, and whoever gets that in their cake slice gets a little crown. In the case of my recipe, I do not own a clay baby figurine and I totally forgot to include an almond in mine. But it’s fine, because what my recipe lacks in almonds and clay babies, it makes up for that with a black tea-red bean-cream cheese flavor bomb. That, and I was able to top mine with a mini galette for that extra cute aesthetic. Suck it, clay baby and almonds, my galette is plenty cute. All jokes aside, for my recipe, I am making the puff pastry from scratch. Mostly because if I used premade pastry, I think people would laugh at me. It might just be the baker in me, but I tend to side-eye people who use frozen puff pastry. Either make it yourself or don’t use it at all, I say! Puff pastry of any kind will take tons of time to make, since laminating dough with butter requires a lot of freezing the dough between folds. And since making puff pastry from a block of butter would take way longer than I would be willing to spend on this recipe(imagine whipping butter, shaping it into a block, refrigerating that, and then starting your dough lamination process, that would just take at least 2 hours to do already), I instead went ahead with a blitz or rough puff pastry, which takes half that amount of time, and gets decently flaky results! And the best part about making the pastry from scratch is that I was able to flavor it with black tea. The rationale behind this being that red bean can be cloyingly sweet, so adding the dry, bitter black tea flavor will help balance that, so that the galette is not overtly sweet.

For this recipe, we have a black tea infused rough puff pastry, stuffed with an almond financier batter, red bean paste, and a layer of cream cheese. The idea here is that the cream cheese will provide creaminess and saltiness, the almond financier, being a brown butter spongecake, will add body to the pastry, and the red bean will be here for sweetness, on top of the financier itself. In terms of technical difficulty, a galette de rois is up there, but only if you make the puff pastry from scratch. If you do not, then it’s probably a 4/10 level of difficulty. Take your time with the rough puff pastry. Give it ample time to cool between folds, and do not try to fast track that process, or else your butter might melt and you will end up with shortbread instead of puff pastry! And while shortbread is delicious, it will not be light and flaky like puff pastry is. the financier dough requires some technical precision, namely in making brown butter. Besides that, the rest of the components are just being layered on top of the almond financier batter and sandwiched between the puff pastry prior to baking. Be sure to brush egg wash on top of the dough for that gorgeous golden-brown color, and not score the pastry too deeply with a paring knife, and you should be good to go! I was able to get this recipe done in 4 hours, which given how much of that time was spent making rough puff pastry, it not too bad. If you want to make the puff pastry one day, then assemble it all another day, maybe go that route too, just to break up the monotony.

Makes 1 8-inch galette(8 servings) and 1 4-inch galette(1 to 2 servings)
For the rough puff pastry:
3 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 cup cold water
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp finely ground black tea powder

Dice up your butter into 1/2-inch cubes and stick in the freezer for at least 20 minutes. Mix together the cold water, vinegar, and salt until dissolved and store in the freezer for at least 5 minutes. It is important that you keep both the butter and the water cold, or else your layers could melt together! In a bowl, toss the butter cubes with the flour and tea powder, making sure that each cube is completely coated in the flour and separate from each other. Form a well in the center of the flour-butter mixture and pour in the cold water. Gently stir the water into the flour mixture until the water is absorbed into the flour. You want a craggy dough with the chunks of butter still visible. If you have mixed the dough to the point where the butter chunks are completely gone, you have overmixed the dough and you should just bake that into crackers or savory shortbreads. Pour your relatively unmixed dough onto a plastic wrap or parchment-lined cold surface and gently push the dough into a rectangle shape and then wrap your dough. Chill down the dough for 25 minutes in the freezer. Place the cold dough onto a floured surface and roll it out to be a rectangle that is about 1 1/2 feet by 6 inches. Fold the dough into thirds, taking each end of the dough along the length and folding them into the center like a brochure or pamphlet. Re-wrap the dough and rechill it for another 20 minutes in the freezer. Repeat this step three more times. For the fifth roll, re-roll and fold it in the same fashion as before, but instead of the freezer, store the dough in the refrigerator until time to use. This will help guarantee that you will not need to wrestle or struggle with rolling out the dough when it comes time to baking with it.

For the almond filling:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3oz dark brown sugar
1/2 cup almond meal
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 egg white
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

In a bowl, start by creaming together your butter and sugar. Fold into that the other ingredients to form a batter-like paste. Transfer into a piping bag.

For assembly:
3oz red bean paste
2oz cream cheese
1 egg yolk
sanding sugar

Roll out the puff pastry to 1/16-inch thickness. Cut out 2 8-inch disks and 2 4-inch disks. Pipe the almond filling onto one disk of each size. Then layer onto that, using a piping bag, the red bean paste. Finally, place slices of cream cheese on top of the red bean. Brush the edges of each disk with beaten egg yolk before placing on the other disks of the same size. Then transfer the galettes to a lined baking sheet. Brush more egg yolk on top of each galette and score the tops with a paring knife. Sprinkle on top of each some sanding sugar. Bake the big galette at 425 degrees F for 25 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 375 degrees F for another 15 minutes. For the small galette, bake for the same 425 degrees F for 25 minutes, but only for a further 5 minutes at 375 degrees F. Allow the two galettes to fully cool before stacking them on top of each other.