Epiphany Bread 2026

Happy New Year 2026!

As we start this new year, there is a lot of resolutions – healthier diets, exercise more – and the expectation for a better year than 2025. From the perspective of the Christian calendar, the twelve days of Christmas continue, providing some light and hope into 2026. The season will come to an end with the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, an event signifying the revelation of Jesus to the Wise Men from the East, also known as the Magi, or “Los Reyes Magos” in Spanish. Epiphany Day is celebrated by Christians around the world, and in Mexico, an important part of the celebration is the sharing of a decorated bread wreath, called Rosca de reyes. Figurines representing baby Jesus are hidden in the bread, and the person to find one in their slice, will have the honour of hosting a party with tamales on February 2nd, marked as Candlemas (día de la Candelaria) and the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple.

My recipe for Epiphany bread is very traditional, made with dry yeast, extra egg yolks for richness and colour, and orange flavourings. Decorations of dry fruit and a crumbly paste sprinkled with sugar, are also the standard on Mexican roscas:

Decorating Epiphany Bread (my kitchen 2019)

My recipe works really well, rendering a buttery and flaky treat (photo below, left), so other than toppings, I have not changed anything over the years. Old-fashioned baby figurines were made of ceramic materials, but nowadays they are mostly made of plastic, so I prefer to hide them in the bread after baking (second photo, below). The traditional toppings in between strips of crumbly paste used to be pieces of dry fig and crystallized acitron (third photo, below), but because the latter is considered an endangered cactus species, bakeries in Mexico have recently opted for the use of other toppings, such as fruit jellies and glazed cherries (my bread in 2022 had red and green glazed cherries, photo below, right):

Inserting baby figurine after baking (2020)

Dry fig, crystallized *acitron* and baby figurines (2020)

This year I was not going to bake Epiphany bread, since my daughters were both leaving before January 6, but one of them requested an early Epiphany bread, so I baked a batch, following my trusted recipe for the bread and crumbly paste (click here for my printable recipe: Epiphany Bread), and using the toppings at hand, namely, some (very) dry papaya chunks, and a jar of maraschino cherries from the fridge. I rehydrated the papaya chunks by soaking in boiling water, and drained the syrup from the cherries. The result was both pretty (photo at the top of this post, and below) and tasty, as it can be attested from the bread being consumed at alarming rates (lol). Everyone liked the maraschino cherries better than glazed cherries, so that is what I will be using from now on.

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