Finding La fève, the king cake trinket

Legend has it, if you find the toy inside the King Cake (or Gallette des Rois: recipe here) on Three Kings Day on January 6th, you become king or queen for the day. The classic king cake trinket in the US is a plastic or porcelain baby, though it was traditionally a fava bean (la fève in French). Now the term “la fève” has come to refer to any kind of trinket that may be found inside the cake, and may be any assortment of tiny characters, foods or animals (though some bakeries in the US are doing away with them altogether). There is something of a collectors market around particularly artistic or rare fèves, and their collectors are called “favophiles.” We came upon a particularly cute assortment of fèves at La Fournette bakery in Chicago, they may just entice us into becoming favophiles.

King Cake Fèves at La Fournette in Chicago