Bolo Rei
a Portuguese Christmas Fave
Every year when it starts getting close to Christmas, my mind turns to baking fancy stuff, or somewhat fancy stuff, and I consider the Bolo Rei to be fancy.
When I lived in Portugal, the Bolo Rei was a biggy for people. They really didn’t celebrate Christmas like North Americans, it was far more of a religious holiday. So no Santa Claus and stockings, etc. instead children would leave their shoes out and in the morning they would find small gifts in the shoes from the Child Jesus.
They actually made far more fuss over Epiphany, which happens on January 6, and is called Dia Dos Reis (Kings Day) and which always features a beautifully decorated Bolo Rei, or King Cake. I always loved this slightly sweet cake.
The recipe is really quite simple:
Start by gathering the assorted crystallized and dry fruit into a bowl the night before you are going to bake
Fruit mix
1/2 cup finely chopped assorted crystallized fruit (Orange peel, lemon peel, cherries, angelica)
1/2 cup seedless raisins
Add
1 tsp finely grated lemon rind
1 tsp finely grated orange rind
3 Tablespoons port wine (or other dessert wine)
1 tablespoon rum
Stir well
Leave covered and soaking overnight. Give it a good stir in the morning.
Next, when you are ready to bake, put the yeast mix together.
Yeast mix
1 package (8 grams) of active yeast
2 tsp granulated sugar (I use pure cane sugar)
1/2 cup warm water or milk.
In a large bowl mix together the yeast, sugar and 1/2 cup warm water. Allow this mixture to stand in a warm place until the yeast is bubbling
In a separate bowl beat three eggs
Add
1/2 cup of sugar or the equivalent in Stevia
1/4 cup melted butter or margerine
1/2 cup warm water or milk
2 TBS pine nuts
Beat well and add to yeast mixture.
Cake Dough
Gradually add 3 cups of flour to your yeast and eggs mix, (reserve the 1/2 cup for kneading the dough). It will become extremely stiff — now add the bowl of boozy fruit, this will soften it up a bit and mix in — now gradually add in the remaining flour which you will end up kneading in rather than mixing. (Of course, if you are lucky enough to have a mixmaster, this is much easier.)
Prepare another large bowl by lightly greasing the inside with margarine or butter, and carefully scrape and dump the soft dough into the greased bowl.
Cover and let it rise in a warm place until it has doubled in bulk.
Once it has doubled in bulk, punch it down and knead it for about 10 minutes. Place it on a greased baking sheet* and make a hole in the centre with your hands, and set a wax paper wrapped jar or a cookie cutter in the centre hole. The idea here is to prevent the dough from oozing back into the centre.(This is removed before baking).
*I used a piece of parchment paper on the bottom of my pan.
Now you add the topping to the unbaked cake.
Topping
4TBS)chopped almonds
4 TBS) chopped walnuts
10 Crystalized Cherries cut in halves
Carefully press the nuts and cherries in the top and sides of the cake.
Next
1 egg yolk, beaten
1 teaspoon water
Using a pastry brush, brush the egg yolk and water mix over the entire surface.
Cover and set aside to rise in a warm place until it has doubled in size.
I found a wire stand and draped it with two clean dishtowels so the top of the cake would not be touched with the dish towels.
Finally, when the cake dough had doubled in size — roughly 2 hours later — I turned the oven on and set the temperature to 350. Once the oven was hot enough, I put the cake in, on the middle shelf, and set the timer for 30 minutes. The recipe had said 40 minutes, but last time I tried this recipe, I found the cake very dry, so decided to try for less time.
When the timer went off, I pulled the cake out and inserted a tooth pick — it came out clean, so I turned off the oven and removed the cake. I waited 5 minutes the slid the cake onto a roasting rack which I put over another shallow pan. This way the cake could cool off prior to final decoration with icing sugar.
The last bit of decoration was to sprinkle some icing sugar over it. (I forgot to take a picture with the cake whole after I sprinkled it.)
If you are doing any baking for Christmas, have fun with it. There really is a great sense of satisfaction to creating something from scratch.
