Welcome to February, king cake fans! We have just three weeks of carnival left and it is time to get serious. I’ve obviously been taking this seriously from the jump, but I want to remind you that it’s a short carnival season and king cake will be gone before you know it. It’s time to start prioritizing. Today is our very first home baker edition! We will be reviewing 10 Cent Baking’s Pistachio and Cardamom Galette des Rois.

Now, I have a lot of respect for home bakers because it is incredibly industrious and it must be a little bit terrifying. 10 Cent Baking is the trade name used by Gillian White, who was bartending prior to the pandemic and is a self-taught baker. Gillian started baking during the pandemic and posting her treats to Instagram where strangers started ordering them for pickup quite quickly. I was honestly a bit surprised to find out that she got her baking start that recently because I definitely ordered treats from her just a few months into the pandemic. The Instagram word must have spread quite quickly for Gillian, which surprises me ZERO, both because her baking is amazing and also because she is awesome and incredibly friendly and cool.

Now, I should mention here that I had tried king cakes from home bakers pre-pandemic, but they had been hit or miss. I had some hits (more on that in a future review) but boy, did I also have some misses. We don’t need to discuss the misses here. What you need to know is that, for a self-taught home baker, Gillian/10 Cent Baking absolutely knocks it out of the park. Let’s just say if I hadn’t told you she was a self-taught home baker, you would have absolutely no idea. I found out that G/10 was making a Galette this year and I had to have one. She was also kind enough to let me order within a day’s notice.

As you know, I love a Galette and, once again, I needed a little king cake palette cleanser. I will also say here that, in my personal opinions and experience, galettes generally keep quite well. I am happy to put them in the fridge and warm individual slices in the oven. Your day-of galette is obviously going to be the best, but I think you can safely enjoy a slice days later with the appropriate preparation. My process, which isn’t exactly scientific, is (1) remove galette from refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature over the course of an hour or so; (2) preheat oven to 375 degrees; (3) cut slice of galette and place on a foil-covered baking tray; and (4) when you start to smell the galette, immediately take it out of the oven. I know, right, science?

I brought this to the office and we all marveled at its beauty. The lamination is so impressive. It’s gorgeous. Look at it! It also comes with an actual fève! Yes, a real dried bean, which is a nice touch.

The pastry was just perfection. It was baked perfectly with a nice (and oddly satisfying) crunch on the outside and fantastic soft layers inside. One thing that I noticed by conducting an experiment (read: scraping together the leftover pastry flakes into a pile and eating them after I finished the slice) is that the pastry dough is really not sweet at all. It is decidedly savory. All of the sweetness comes from the lamination/glaze and the filling. I thought this was an important aspect of this cake because it is very balanced and not too sweet, and the frangipane filling of a Galette des Rois can sometimes be REALLY almond-y sweet. Gillian and I actually shared a couple of laughs about how polarizing frangipane can be. She referenced an SNL skit about marzipan, which I later looked up. You should, too. Kenan Thompson describes marzipan as a “mostly almond almost candy.” My favorite line was from the chef: “Let’s see if it’s ready! Yuck! It’s perfect!”

Here, the filling is not yuck. It is yum. And is extremely generous—there is a ton of it! This is a cake for serious galette eaters. The frangipane filling is made with pistachio instead of almond, so y’all know I liked that. I like pistachio in some but not all contexts. For example, I am not a big fan of pistachio ice cream or macarons, but I love pistachios in shells and as fillings. This was delicious and was still unmistakably frangipane. The pistachio flavor is very pronounced. I am not sure I got much cardamom, and to confirm, I actually bought some cardamom at Whole Foods to make sure I truly knew what I was looking for. What I learned from this exercise is that cardamom is extremely pungent and almost perfume-like. It’s fantastically fragrant but in a way that may not seem appetizing to most. I asked my mom and she said she thought she got some cardamom flavor in the dough and crust. I wasn’t sure. But what I can tell you is that my instinct is that too much cardamom could have been a bad thing, so I’ll take what I got here, because it was delicious.

Overall, this galette is really, really special. It is very elegant, and one of my colleagues reached out and asked me for G/10’s contact information so that she could buy one of the Galettes for a party she is throwing. It is a great party cake and perfect for leftovers. Support home bakers! 4.5 stars.