Growing up at my house, one of our favorite family traditions was celebrating Three Kings Day. And while it meant the official end of Christmas, taking down the tree and packing away the decorations, it also meant eating a scrumptious treat — a ring-shaped loaf of sweet bread decorated to look like a crown and baked with a special prize inside.
Three Kings Day, an important Christmas holiday in Spain and several Latin America countries, is the 12th day of Christmas, and commemorates the visit of the Three Wise Men to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem bearing gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh.
In Colombia, where my mother is from, Jan. 6 is a national holiday known as the Día de los Reyes Magos, or the Epiphany. As in Mexico, the day is a gift-giving holiday and a time for family and friends to be together.
You can imagine the surprise when as children our Abuelita Rosita would recount to my brother, sister and I how our mother and her siblings would leave their shoes out the night before filled with food for the kings’ camels along with a note. By the morning of the next day, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar had replaced the hay with gifts.
While traditions vary from country to country and community to community, one commonality of the celebration is a type of slightly sweet bread called roscón de reyes, served garnished with “jewels” of candied fruit and nuts.
A small object made of clay or porcelain, representing the baby Jesus, is baked inside. At our house, the finder of the figurine is crowned and becomes king or queen for the day.
A more traditional custom is that whoever finds the figurine must host a dinner party on Candlemas, Feb. 2. Another belief is that luck is granted to the person who finds it. In any case, half the pleasure of eating roscón de reyes is finding out who gets the prize.
Roscón de Reyes
from King Arthur Flour Cookbook
Dough ingredients
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup unsalted butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons instant yeast
3.25 cups all-purpose flour
Filling ingredients
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped nuts
3/4 cup dried mixed fruits
1 tablespoon lemon, orange, or lime zest
Garnish ingredients
candied red cherries and/or orange peel
toasted sliced almonds, pecans, cashews or walnuts
Glaze: Combine 1 tablespoon sugar with 2 teaspoons water and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Stir to combine, then drizzle over the bread for the last 20 minutes of the baking time.
Dough: Heat the milk to a simmer in a small saucepan. Pour the hot milk over the butter, sugar and salt, and stir occasionally until the butter melts. Cool the mixture to lukewarm.In a mixing bowl combine the milk mixture, eggs and yeast. Add the flour one cup at a time, and mix until a soft, smooth dough forms.Place the dough in a greased container, cover it, and set it in a draft-free place to rise until doubled (about 60 to 90 minutes).After the first rise, deflate the dough, cover and let it rest for 10 minutes. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface; roll into a 20-by-12-inch rectangle.
Filling: Brush the surface of the dough with melted butter, leaving a half-inch strip bare along one of the long edges. Combine the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Add the nuts, mixed fruits and zest, and stir to coat. Sprinkle this mixture evenly over the buttered section of the dough.
Assembly: Starting with the garnished long edge, roll the dough up jelly-roll style, working toward the edge with no butter on it. Pinch the seam together to seal it firmly, and then bring the ends together to form a ring. To keep the bread round, grease the outside of a small bowl and put it on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Place the ring, seam-side down, around the bowl and tuck one end inside the other, pinching it together to seal it.
Flatten the ring slightly and, using a pair of scissors, make cuts in the dough at 1.5-inch intervals around the outside edge. Insert a figurine into the dough. Cover with greased plastic wrap and let rise until nearly doubled (about 30 to 40 minutes).
Baking: Once the dough is shaped and is rising for the second time, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. When the dough has risen, remove the plastic wrap and brush the top with beaten egg. Place the candied cherries (cut in half) in the spaces between the slits in the dough and decorate with nuts as desired. Combine the glaze ingredients and drizzle over the top.
Bake the bread for 25 to 30 minutes, covering the loaf loosely with foil after the first 15 minutes, as it will brown quickly. Remove the bread from the oven when the inner parts of the slits look cooked and the interior measures 190 degrees when measured with an instant-read thermometer. Cool the bread on a rack.
Serve, celebrate & enjoy!
