Galette des rois

[Parigi]

I recommend that everyone who is in Paris now go taste the galette des rois at Seurre (22 rue des Martyrs). The pâtisserie is proverbially living on borrowed time. It was supposed to close its doors last December (lost its lease to a supermarket! Just shoot me).
I brought 2 of them to a (marvelous, delicious, noisy) Chowhound dinner last week.
It was pure torture.
We got it, hot, in the morning. I had to smell that hard-drug smell all day, biting my lips blue to prevent self from eating the whole thing, chowhound dinner schmowhound dinner.
(Btw, Soup crowned me queen, who in turn crowned Meg king, or queen consort.)

[Busk]

Wait, what? Huh? Who got the fevre?

[Parigi]

Fève. I got the fève. So I got crowned. And in turn I had the right to crown someone else. In this day and age of equal-opportunity crowning, why can't a roi be a reine who chooses another reine? Vive la galette des meufs.

[Parigi]

Tasted an excellent galette des rois from Gérard Mulot, just buttery enough, just almond-pasty enough, just crusty enough.
Plus, on Valentine's Day no less, bit into a gold key "clé de l'amour" in the guise of a fève.

[vielleanglaise]

Galette des rois in February is a culinary anachronism.

[Parigi]

True but Paris has quite a few such heretics now.
In fact the GdR season has been slowly and secretly expanding.
Once upon a time it was a Jan 1st to 15th kind of thAng. Then the season extended to the first 3 weeks of the month.
Now most boulangeries offer it for the entire month of January. And when I saw it at Gérard Mulot yesterday, did I argue with them that it was too late in the season? Or did I thank my lucky star and bought one and went home and worshipped it? Whadyathink?

[vielleanglaise]

Candlemas with its purification of virgins and crepes was last week! Epiphany more than a month ago! I call for an inquisition.

[ChefJune]

Maybe they're going for the New Orleans version. In NOLA the Galette des Rois goes from Epiphany through Mardi Gras. It's Party Time up until Lent.

[sunshine842]

A NOLA King Cake isn't even from the same galaxy as a French Galette des Rois.

Leaden coffee cake slathered with a slurry of confectioner's sugar and obnoxiously-tinted granulated sugar will never hold a candle to the feather-light layers embracing an almond pastry cream (frangipane) and gilded to a rich gold by the warmth of the oven.