The pancake carpet slipper: the Twelfth-Night pancake of the Swamp from Poitou!

The Twelfth-Night pancake is expected by all the gourmands hardly the past parties. But, what is its origin? What represents the bean? And especially, when we do eat it?
Some people prefer it to the almond paste, others brioche-like in candied fruits.

In January is the month of the Twelfth-Night pancake. We thus decided this month to confide you a recipe of pancake with angelica which we have us friendly flabbergasted in the ear. But, before passing in cooking, let us speak a little of history. 

The 1st Sunday or January 6th?
To 1960s, Epiphanie was a holiday which fell on January 6th. The sharing of the cake was often celebrated on the evening of the 5th. But, Vatican decided that Epiphanie would be celebrated on first Sunday according to January 1st. In fact, it is the sharing of the cake that is traditional. And it is made several times in the month. 

" King drinks "
The election of king goes back to the Roman Saturnalia. King was elected and gave wages. During these parties, at the time of the winter solstice, masters and slaves were on an equal footing and everybody ate at the same table. " To pull King " was common from the Middle Ages. Normally, the one who found the bean had to buy its round of drinks in the banked. Some claim that the most miserly swallowed the bean not to pay out money. This is the way would have been born the porcelain bean, so that king is afraid of swallowing it. 
Under the French Revolution, out of the question to elect king! But, no way either to go without on one hand pancake. The pancake of the Freedom and the Equality, without bean nor king was thus born. It is on this principle that is celebrated to the Élysée Palace the Twelfth-Night pancake, since Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. 

The bean, the symbol of fertility
The bean is a part of symbols of the winter solstice. It is the first vegetable which grows to spring. Especially, this vegetable, as the egg, contains an embryo. By aging, it gives birth. The bean, the vegetable neither too flat nor too big, could be easily hidden in the pancake; not rather small also to be ingested. In 1875, appear porcelain beans of Saxony; in 1913, those of the studios of Limoges. At the beginning, it was about dolls, then about swimmers and finally about wrapped up babies, signs of fertility. Followed after the symbols of luck and the animals. In 1960, the first plastic beans appear. Less dear, they will override the china.
And now let us pass in the recipe … 

The Pancake of the Swamp in the crystallized angelica

Ingredients
1 beautiful stalk of crystallized angelica
300 gr of flour of green lentils
200 gr of brown sugar
250 gr of butter
1 cc of cooking salt 1 egg + 1 yellow of egg.

Preparation
1. Preheat the oven in 220 ° C. Cut the butter in small pieces. Crush the cooking salt in the pestle. Mix all the ingredients, except the yellow, until obtain a compact ball.
2. Spread the dough over a plate on a thickness between 0,5 and 1 cm. Gild in the brush with the yellow of egg and draw crosspieces by means of a fork.
Put in the oven for 12 min: the pancake must be gilded well.
3. Let cool on the plate and cut in small squares before serving.

The Pancake can keep several days.