How to Bake King Cake
Serves: 8
Preparation time: 2 hours
Cooking time: 30 mins
Ingredients needed to make King Cake:
- 1 lb 2 oz ready made puff pastry
- 2 tbsp all purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 4 ½ oz butter, at room temperature
- 2 eggs
- 4 tsp raspberry jam
- 4 ½ oz ground almonds
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp brandy
- 4 ½ oz caster sugar
Cooking instructions for King Cake:
- Warm up your oven to 400 degrees F.
- Dust your working surface with flour and place the puff pastry on it.
- Slice it into two equal halves and roll them into large circles, each over 10’’ in diameter.
- Carve out a neat circles out of each pastry round, using a dinner plate as an outline, and place them on two separate baking trays.
- Leave them in the fridge for half an hour to chill.
- Meanwhile, add a large dollop of butter into a mixing bowl and stir in sugar.
- Whisk the mixture with an electric mixer, until the sugar dissolves and it creams.
- Stir in the vanilla extract, along with a splash of brandy and continue to whisk the mixture until they turn light and airy.
- Crack the eggs into a separate bowl and beat them lightly; reserve 2 tbsp of the beaten egg to be used later.
- Pour rest of the beaten eggs to the creamed butter-sugar mixture and whisk them into a smooth mixture.
- Stir in the almonds and flour until they are properly blended and the nuts are evenly distributed throughout the mixture.
- Take the pastries out the fridge and smother one of its base with jam, leaving a 1 ½’’ border along the edges.
- Top it up with the almond mixture and spread them with a spatula to level the surface.
- Paint the edges of that pastry with the reserved beaten egg and cover with the other pastry round.
- Pinch the open ends together to seal and trim away the excess pastry hanging from the edges with a sharp knife.
- Hold the knife perpendicular to the edges of the pastry and tap gently to roughen the edges; this will make the pastry easier to puff up.
- Smother the surface of the pastry with rest of the beaten egg and bake at the preheated temperature for half an hour or until it puffs up and turns golden.
- Take it out of the oven and set aside to cool slightly.
- Serve warm.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
