Jan. 6th was Three Kings Day and in Spain it is celebrated as the big gift exchanging day of the Christmas holidays. There is also a typical breakfast bread called Roscón de Reyes and this year I decided to make one. I wanted to post the recipe but really I didn't follow one very well. I looked at several and then worked with what I had. The recipes I found were also all using liters and grams- damn the metric system! No, I actually consider it a superior system to our mismatched inherited measuring units but it is very frustrating when you want to follow some comfort food recipe and can't find the right measuring tools. I went through that in Spain when I first arrived as I had neglected to take a set of measuring spoons and cups at first. It's just strange that we measure flour by volume while in other countries they use weight. How much does a cup of flour weight anyway? I also had trouble with yeast because I was used to the little pellets they sell here in hermetically sealed envelopes in the baking aisle whereas in Spain they sell them in little white crumbly-moist cubes that must be refrigerated and are in the bakery department or in actual bakeries (panaderías).
Anyway, the ingredients are...
For the starter dough: (masa madre)
milk (I used almond milk)
flour
bread yeast
You mix this and leave it a few hours
Then later:
More flour
more milk
eggs
butter
brown sugar
zest of orange or lemon
agua de azahar (honestly, I'm not sure what this is... I left it out)
anis (would have been nice but I didn't have any and didn't want to go back out)
dried fruit (I chose organic papaya, mango and dates, probably not traditional)
I added pecans (not traditional)
All the ingredients were organic and I used half whole wheat half white flour. It turned out much more decent than I feared as I did a lot of estimating and substituting ingredients.
Inside the Roscón you put a little surprise figure and a bean. The person that gets the prize has good luck all year- Marco got it in his very first slice! The bean means you have to pay for next years Roscón. Someone from my work got it when I took the leftovers in the next day- hee hee :)
5 comments:
Pues yo que lo he probao tengo que decir que estaba buenísimo, casi profesional. Gracias por el esfuerzo de hacerlo Laia, un besin :o)
pd. shanti me acaba de decir que el no lo ha probado todavía ;)
Qué pinta más rica, me mandais un cachito plis? ;o)
I looked it up for you Laia. It's orange blossom water.
Gracias Marco, siempre dandome animos... y si, Luna, te mando un cachin y lo tomamos con te canadiense. Alli en general lo toman con leche y azucar, no?
Hi Kari, thanks for stopping by :) I wonder where I could get orange blossom water here in Florida? With so much citris around you'd think there would be some. Something to explore...
Wow, what a beautiful cake!!
The comment is a little late since it's about 9 months later, but, hey, it's better late than never. I grew up with 'roscones de reyes' pero en Catalunya los llamamaos "tortell de reis". This one was beautifull!!!
Where did you get your wonderful baking genes?!
:) MOM
Post a Comment