Matcha Galette Des Rois Recipe

This easy matcha galette des rois recipe uses pre-made puff pastry for a super quick and tasty seasonal dessert.

Galette des rois is a French pastry traditionally eaten during Epiphany in early January – a festival celebrating the star leading the three wise men to baby Jesus. The key components of a galette des rois are puff pastry, frangipane, and a fève.

The 'fève' (meaning 'fava bean'), used to literally just be a dried fava bean hidden in the cake, with the lucky person to find it in their slice being crowned king or queen for the day.

Nowadays it's common to pop a cute ceramic figurine inside the galette instead of a dried fava bean, but many also pop a whole almond in instead. In this case I actually used a whole pecan nut (honestly because I forgot to buy whole almonds and happened to have pecans), so any nut will do. But of course, since frangipane has a base of ground almonds, a whole almond makes more sense.

I made a matcha galette des rois with matcha powder and a little sake. Many traditional galette de rois recipes include a little brandy or rum in the recipe. But since I was making a matcha galette des rois, I decided to use Japanese alcohol to complement the matcha rather than overpower it.

You can also watch me make this on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients:

75g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
75g caster sugar
2 tsp matcha, sifted
Pinch of salt
1 egg
A couple of drops of almond extract
100g ground almonds
2 tbsp sake (preferably a junmai daiginjo, or any fruity-scented sake)
500g ready-made all-butter puff pastry
1 whole nut (preferably an almond)

To Glaze:

1 egg yolk
A splash of milk

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2. To make the matcha frangipane, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy and fluffy, and stir in the matcha and salt. Beat in the egg and almond extract, then stir in the ground almonds. Finally, stir in the sake, and spoon the frangipane into a piping bag.

3. Make the glaze by whisking the egg yolk and milk together in a small bowl, and set aside.

4. Lay a long sheet of baking parchment down on your work surface, lightly sprinkle with a little plain flour, and roll out the puff pastry so the sheet's long and wide enough to cut out two roughly 8" circles. You may also need to lightly flour the top of the pastry if it becomes sticky while rolling.

5. Place an 8" tin upside-down on one end of the pastry and, using a knife, carefully cut around it to form a circle. Repeat on the other side of your pastry, so you have two pastry discs, and discard the excess pastry (or bake it later with a sprinkling of sugar to snack on).

6. If necessary, gently lift and move one of the pastry discs further away from the other. Cut the baking paper to separate the discs, cutting so that one disc has plenty of baking paper surrounding it so it has room to spread while baking. Set the other disc aside to use as the 'top disc' (it doesn't matter if the paper for this disc has been cut too close to the pastry).

7. Place the bottom disc, parchment and all, on a baking tray.

8. Brush a little water around the edges of the disc, about 3cm in thickness from the edge of the pastry.

9. Pipe the matcha frangipane in a spiral in the centre of your bottom disc, staying away from the 3cm perimeter that you brushed with water. Smooth the top of the frangipane with the back of a spoon.

10. Press the whole nut/almond into the outer edge of your frangipane circle.

11. Lay the 'top disc' of pastry over the top, and discard the baking paper it was on. Gently stretch and reshape the top disc to fit as necessary, lightly pressing down around the edges to seal the two pastry layers together.

12. Make a scalloped pattern around the edge of the galette by placing two fingers on the edge of the pastry and using a blunt knife to cut in between your fingers (but not so deeply into the centre of the galette that you hit the frangipane). Move your fingers one finger-width along and continue cutting to get an even pattern.

13. Brush the top of the galette with your egg yolk glaze, and score any pattern you like on top.

14. Bake for 25– 30 minutes (less time for a gooey frangipane, more time for a dryer, cakey frangipane), or until deeply golden brown on top and puffy.

15. Cool completely before slicing and serving.

Enjoy, and have fun.