A giant Bolo-Rei, Portugal’s traditional Christmas cake, will be served to all in Loulé this Saturday (January 6) in celebration of Epiphany.
Starting at 5pm at Praça da República, the 150-metre-long cake will be cut and distributed to the population, marking the “closure of the municipality’s Christmas entertainment programme.”
The cake is baked every year by local pastry shop Loulé Doce using an impressive list of ingredients: 110 kilos of flour, 100kg of crystallised fruit for decoration, 50kg of chopped crystallised fruit, 50kg of dried fruits (sultanas, almonds, figs, and walnuts), 22kg of eggs (38 dozen), 22kg of sugar, 14kg of margarine, 2kg of flavoring, 1.6kg of salt, and 1.6kg of yeast.
As Loulé Municipal Council explains in a statement to the press, Bolo-Rei became popular in the 19th century, serving also to represent the gifts that the Three Wise Men gave to Baby Jesus at his birth: the crust symbolises gold; crystallised and dried fruits represent myrrh, and the cake’s smell symbolises incense.
michael.bruxo@portugalresident.com
