Twelfth Night Cake

Driekoningenbrood

500 grams flour
2 deciliter milk
package of yeast
salt
125 grams butter or margarine
1 egg yolk
50 grams almond paste
1 almond
icing sugar

Prepare the yeast as per instructions on the package and mix in with the milk (if so directed), salt, melted butter and egg yolk to form a dough. Cover it with a clean tea towel and let it rise for 45 minutes.

Mix in the almond paste and shape the dough into a ball. Stuff the blanched almond somewhere inside the dough. Put the ball on a greased cookie sheet and let it rise for another 30 minutes. With a scissor cut inch-deep notches in the side of the bread every inch and cut a star across the top of the ball.

Bake the cake for about half an hour in a preheated oven at 200C/395F. Let it cool off and brush the cake’s top with melted butter. Sprinkle icing sugar all over the carved in star.

The guest who gets the piece of Driekoningenbrood with the whole almond in it, is ‘crowned’ king for the night, and as part of that privilege, is supposed to treat the rest of the gathering. Driekoningen - Epiphany, January 6th - is the 13th day after Christmas, when the Magi (in Dutch: “Drie Koningen” or “Drie Wijzen”) after having followed the star arrived at the manger in Bethlehem.