Mardi Gras King Cake

It seems that every store I visited in New Orleans sold boxed mixes for something called a King Cake. I had never eaten one, or made one, or even heard of one for that matter : )

They looked really cool though ..so many sprinkles and colors. And..a plastic baby inside the cake? I decided to study up on this interesting cake when I returned home and try to make one.

I quickly realized this cake is more of a cinnamon roll than anything else. The dough was easy enough to make but took awhile to rise, as is the case with most sweet breads.

Some recipes leave you with more of a brioche style dough and some call for it to be chilled while rising. Some recipes say to cut the dough in to pieces and then braid them together, while others say to make a ring with the dough by joining the ends together. I was trying to find the most traditional recipe for this Mardi Gras cake but it seemed that every recipe I found had some kind of new variation to add.

I was starting to get the idea that as long as you had a hole in the middle, a plastic baby or dried bean inside and the right color of sprinkles on top then it was traditional enough to be called a King Cake. The hole makes the required “crown” shape , the baby represents Jesus, and the sprinkles…purple for justice, green for faith and yellow/gold for power…the colors of Mardi Gras.

Armed with a ton of notes, I made my cake. I tried to braid it and realized I don’t know how to braid bread..it’s not as easy as braiding hair. You have to move very slowly and I just couldn’t figure it out. My dough was so mangled from over handling it that I had to throw out one of the pieces and was left with more of a twist..

It was delicious and pretty, but technically, it was a fail. I had to find a way to achieve the look I wanted without the braid. So I decided to try again..and again until I had come up with an easy to replicate, traditionally beautiful King cake. With enough attempts, I found that it is easiest to make the round version and then slice the top to create texture and let the dough rise around a mason jar to preserve the hole in the middle.

I could tell when I pulled it out of the oven that it was the right decision for style and shape.. I had tried so many other methods and they all seemed to create some kind of issue with the final look. I had lopsided cakes, cakes with no hole, cakes that spread and had no shape at all..I had a very happy family because even the ugly ones tasted amazing but..Finally, I had an almost perfect King Cake : )

When it came time to decorate I couldn’t find purple sprinkles at the store so I just added a few drops of food coloring to some sugar and mixed it up…super easy.

I had a great time learning about the history of this cake and making it for my family. It really is delicious. The sprinkles melt into the icing creating a nice crunch against the soft cinnamon roll cake. I will make this cake for Mardi Gras again next year but I will also make it just for fun…It’s too good to be a once a year cake : )

Amy Danielle

Adventures in Food

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