These Bejeweled Treats Are a Must for Three Kings Day

Mexican bakeries begin their preparations for Día de los Reyes Magos, or Three Kings Day, weeks before the holiday’s Jan. 6 arrival. At La Monarca Bakery & Cafe in Los Angeles, bakers have been mixing and freezing bread dough since early December for the celebration’s signature treat: rosca de reyes, or three kings bread.

For many Latinos, Three Kings Day concludes the holiday season. People line up outside their favorite bakeries early in the morning to pick up a rosca to celebrate the day the Magi brought gifts to the baby Jesus. Families gather later in the evening and eat the sweet bread along with champurrado, café de olla or hot chocolate.

Recipe: Rosca de Reyes

This Epiphany bread likely arrived in Latin America in the 20th century when Spaniards fled to Mexico during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and opened bakeries, where they served rosca. The highly symbolic bread became more popular throughout Mexico in the 1950s but began to appear in cookbooks in the 1930s and 1940s, said Mely Martínez, the author of “The Mexican Home Kitchen: Traditional Home-Style Recipes That Capture the Flavors and Memories of Mexico.”

Its round shape is meant to represent the eternal love of God, and nuts and dried fruit candies like acitrón signify the jewels on the kings’ crowns. Some bread recipes include orange flavoring. Similar to Carnival king cake and French galette des rois, roscas also have a favor — typically a plastic baby — inside the cake.