Winter's Cakes
French pastries that sweeten the season
Bonjour dear readers!
I hope you’ve had a lovely start to 2025! I spent the end of 2024 visiting friends and family in New York and New Orleans, and the beginning of 2025 battling a plague (aka a nasty cold) that’s been felling everyone I know. Beside some lingering congestion, I’m finally feeling normal again.
January in Paris means it’s cold, gray, and dark. The sun doesn’t come up until close to 9 a.m., and it’s dark well before 6 p.m. This isn’t even the home stretch of a Parisian winter—that’s in late February, when spring is right around the corner—but rather the middle of the bleakness.
Some people really despise January, but it’s grown on me over the years. It’s my birthday month, so it’s always been a period of reflective celebration. And during a month when many are embracing resolutions, abstaining from alcohol, or leaning into routine after December’s excesses, I think it’s a wonderful time to be a little subversive: organize a party, be lazy in bed all day, eat the cake.
One thing I love about the French is they usually have a pastry for any season or occasion. Strawberry and raspberry tarts blossom in the summer. Autumn ushers in apple confections. And generalized malaise can be cured by an éclair au chocolat or a millefeuille all year long.
Two pastries are often consumed during a French winter: bûches de Noël (yule logs) and galettes des rois (king cake). Last fall, I was invited to taste these two delicacies at one of the premier pâtisseries in Paris: Arnaud Larher. Not only is Arnaud Larher one of the best pastry chefs in France, having won the highly coveted Meilleur Ouvrier de France award (it’s basically like winning the Olympics of pastry-making), but his Saint-Germain shop also holds a special place in my palate; it’s a regular stop on the Left Bank food tour I guide with Paris by Mouth.
If you’re visiting Paris soon, I highly recommend stopping by the Saint-Germain boutique. It’s a 5-minute walk from the Luxembourg Gardens, which is a great spot to grab a seat on a bench and enjoy pastry while partaking in some premium people-watching.
Arnaud Larher
93 rue de Seine, 75006
Bûche de Noël
Every holiday season in France sees the unveiling of that year’s bûches de Nöel (yule logs) throughout pâtisseries and boulangeries. Fashioned from rolled sponge cake spread with buttercream and accented with meringue or marzipan decorations, the cylinder form resembles an actual log, nodding to the ancient pagan tradition of burning a log during the holiday season.
Arnaud Larher created three bûches for this past holiday season: the Victoire (almond and vanilla sponge cake, hazelnut cream, and caramelized hazelnuts); the Bubble framboise (raspberry mousse, almond biscuit, choux pastry); and the Julia (chestnut cream, Chantilly cream, Corsican clementine marmalade).
Bûches are melt-in-your mouth decadent, the embodiment of richness, an explosion of flavors, making them apt treats for last gasps of indulgence during holiday festivities. Yet, as the season’s joy and cheer come to an end, there’s another wintertime French cake that takes the lead: la galette des rois.
Galette des Rois
Translated as “king cake,” the galette des rois appears in French bakeries and pastry shops right after the New Year, and it’s enjoyed throughout the month of January, during Epiphany season. Traditionally made from layers of puff pastry and almond cream, galettes des rois are delectable in their simplicity. And whereas bûches are typically eaten as a dessert after a main meal, a slice of galette des rois equally works as breakfast, a snack, and dessert.
Galettes des rois come in different sizes, usually for four or six people, but one delightful aspect of them is that many bakeries offer individual-sized galettes for one person. The individual galettes are perfect for enjoying solo, on the street (I do this often). The puff pastry’s crumbs dotting my scarf are often the only lingering evidence that the perfect pastry crime was just committed.
During a time of year when the sun is mostly nonexistent in Paris, when everything and everyone is serious, when simple pleasures might seem elusive, the galette des rois holds a vital role:
After December’s parties are long over, the galette des rois reminds us that we deserve some sweetness in our lives. It’s the hug you didn’t know you needed, in pastry form. It’s a ray of gold light (literally, its exterior is golden) amidst the gray.
Merci beaucoup for reading!
—Victorine
Maintenant, Je suis faim! 💜
Oh how I wish I had a single serving king cake, with crumbs dusting my scarf!