January King Cake or "Galette des rois"

Celine, baker of Galette des rois or January King Cake 

A few years ago now, on January the 6th, we were invited to a tea with January King Cake or Galette des rois by my friend, Celine. Present at the occasion were Maya, from whom I derived the carrot cake  recipe, and my Italian friend, Ilaria, from whom, of course, I learnt to make pizza. King Cake is related to the festival of Epiphany; and was a French tradition which Celine wanted to share with us. 

Celine and her husband are French, and have restored an old farmhouse in the countryside outside Lyon. Vincent is a research chemist and Celine a thermodynamics engineer turned school-teacher turned full-time mother and builder. They both had this dream of living in the country, and in early 2001 they bought a house that had been built in 1905 but never maintained since, with a half-fallen down barn by now semi-attached to it. The place was certainly uninhabitable. They were recently married, in their early twenties, and, as a joke, their wedding cake had been emblazoned with a picture of a farm. But they shortly thereafter sunk what little money they had (which wasn’t much) and saddled themselves with a mortgage - all for a ruin of a house, albeit with a nice little bit of ground (enough to contain a few rare-breed goats and hopefully now a black pig) bordering on a forest, and with a wonderful view of Mont Blanc in the distance. Both sets of parents came and visited and nearly platzed on the spot. Celine reports that they were very angry, all of them, and then gives the French shrug: Oh well. I love the French shrug; it's so accepting and yet so defiant and nonchalant, all at the same time, or at least that's the way Vincent and Celine use it.

Fun in the desert with ski sleds

So, they lived in a caravan, and the kitchen was finished just in time for their first child's arrival into the world, and shortly thereafter, the first bedroom was completed. And so it went, with each child, born in fairly quick succession, another bedroom was finished, just in time. Apart from laying the new floor of the barn, which required structural engineering, and which furnished them with the family living room with the magnificent view of the mountains, all the work was undertaken by them. As Vincent puts it, for years and years they took no holidays, had no spare money and no free time, since everything they had they sunk into the house, working nights and weekends, doing it all themselves. So when the opportunity of working in Saudi Arabia came up, they took it, always with the aim of returning within two to three years, but with the cash to finish the house finally, just the way they wanted it, including a swimming pool.

Fun with kids in Sandy Arabia, sorry - Saudi Arabia

One of our favourite programmes is Grand Designs and certainly, episode by episode, if one lesson is clear, it is that no-one who isn’t absolutely determined and has immense stamina and who is prepared to spend more than they ever think they have and have everything take much, much longer than they think it should, should ever undertake restoring a ruin or building their own house. But if I were ever to look for a partner in such a venture, I definitely would look no further than Celine in particular. She is absolutely indefatigable. She volunteered once to come and help me paint the children’s chairs in various shades of enamel for the playroom we were doing up at the Women’s Group. Sarah, her youngest was only about 2 months old, but this didn’t stop her in the least. Nor did the fact that it was 42C outside at the time and of course we were working outside. She pretty much worked flat-out for the entire day, only stopping every now and again to breast-feed when Sarah was brought to her by Vincent, who had stayed at home looking after the kids for her. She worked like a machine, all day long, virtually without pause. And then at the end of the day loaded up all the soft toys to take them home with her and put them through the washing machine. Amazing.

Enamel chairs and desks painted by Celine, wall murals by myself, Mandy and 17 other volunteers who did the sea 

Celine is also a superb baker, and being French, makes everything, as the Americans would put it, from scratch. It is always a study in contrasts for us at the Women’s Group – you have Celine and Mathilde, both French, who have come and given baking demonstrations, and then Maya, who is Lebanese – all of them are superb cooks and bakers. But, invariably, someone from the audience, generally American, and generally not small, after remarking in astonishment on the amount of sugar in a cake (like if they don’t see it in a cake mix it’s not there) and query as to whether there is a low-fat substitute for the oil or butter. Every time, the response is exactly the same. These slim, healthy women wrinkle up their noses, literally, in a mixture of puzzlement, almost distaste, at the question. Celine was the most succinct, she just said, “No.” When Ilaria, our Italian simultaneous translator turned organiser of Olympic events turned full-time mother and Women’s Group organiser of the Monday Morning programme, asked her to clarify her response, for the sake of our audience, Celine gave an engineer’s reply, again with a French shrug of the shoulders, “There is no substitute,” she clarified. And went back to beating her mixture. Maya laughed and said, “I’m a full-fat girl myself,” and then added, “It’s for the taste, you know - it does taste better.” Mathilde simply said, “If you want to watch your weight, don’t bake a cake.” And yet all of them are absolutely rigorous when it comes to no Trans-fats, healthy fruit and vegetables and so on – the kind that read all the labels in the rare event that they buy processed food, since generally they just always make their own. But it certainly makes for interesting audience-watching.

Celine, for whom there is no substitute for butter 

Both Vincent and Celine were a great inspiration to us, and once the kids left with Celine, we missed them very much indeed, their four and our three used to love to run around naked and swim and shriek and play in what we euphemistically termed our gardens but were more like large sand-pits - partly because it’s hard to grow anything in Saudi, since the desalinated water they use in the gardens is toxic over time to any plant that isn’t salt-tolerant, and partly because the kids like playing in sand. And water. And water and sand. However, discovering that we had very similar value systems, and a similar, child-centred and relaxed approach to going out into the desert, into the desert we ventured to go with them and it certainly expanded our universes.

Stuck in the soft sand in the desert; testing our ladders (they worked) 

The up-side on any multi-cultural expatriate community is the wonderful friends from all over the world that you make. Of course, the down-side is that your community is fragile and always transient. Certainly the fact that so many of our dear friends have left for pastures new, not for money (it’s hard, in particular, to beat Saudi Aramco pay, especially since it’s tax-free), but for lifestyle, has helped us focus on our values. Not that we ever viewed this as a permanent move, but we see so many here become addicted to the lifestyle, to the money, but not be particularly happy, but without a definite plan or end-point in sight, just keep on keeping on, year after year, until finally they hit retirement.  Sure, there are those who love it too - this is not about making judgements, but about choices - which are always, utterly individual. But always, if you don’t define for yourself what is important to you, then circumstances define them for you.

We figured that, like many of our friends, for us a garden and a particular kind of lifestyle was most important to us; sure, we loved the travel, but every year I lived there, I became more despondent about a lack of a garden in which I could grow things - and though I miss the wonderful expatriate lifestyle, and the utterly beautiful homes that people transform their houses into, every day I can walk now into a forest, a grassland and a monkey-proof organic vegetable garden, and for us, that was priceless. For as Vincent said, again with a shrug, when queried by Aramcons as to why they were even thinking of leaving, and leaving this lifestyle and money behind, “Well, our dream was not to become really, really wealthy and travel the world, our dream was to live in the countryside in France, with our children.”

So, on this January 6th, in celebration of a fantastic friendship and lots of desert fun, we shall be making a January King Cake and will try to Skype France this evening with feedback on our results.

January King Cake or Galette des rois Recipe

2 puff pastry rolls (one for the bottom, one iced with egg yolk for the top) 

For the filling mix the following ingredients until you have a soft paste 

3 eggs 

125 g almonds powder 

125 g sugar 

125 g butter (kept for a while at room temperature to have it soft) 

2 drops of bitter almonds essence 

2 large spoons of orange flower essence or of alcohol. 

One figurine for designating the king - can be a dried bean.

As Celine puts it, when queried as to the temperature: "approximately 30 min same temperature than for a cake, I am sorry, I am now out of °F again, I do not remember how I used to put my oven there. Anyway it is not very important, it is easy to cook, the only very important thing is that the butter should not be melted but creamy"

In other words, pre-heat oven to moderate, that is, 180 °C, 360 °F or gas mark 4 

Bake for 30 minutes.

Much laughter and learning in the Dhahran Women's Group kitchen, Saudi Arabia 

I will try it today, and see how it turns out and update with pictures.