King Cake

Down in New Orleans
Where the blues was born
It takes a cool cat
To blow a horn
On LaSalle and Rampart Street
The combo's there with a mambo beat

The Mardi Gras, mambo, mambo, mambo
Party Gras, pambo, mambo, mambo
Mardi Gras, mambo-ooh
Down in New Orleans

It's that time of year again, King Cake time! When I was little it seemed like my dad always had a conference in New Orleans in January and we would always bring back King Cakes for my brother and sister and I to take to school to share with everyone. Now you can find King Cakes for sale in grocery stores all over Houston so it isn't really necessary to bring them back from Louisiana but it's still fun. I like King Cake more for the festiveness that it provides less than the actual cake itself. Like anything, there are really yummy King Cakes and so-so King Cakes (these are usually dry and not very sweet) there are King Cakes with filling and King Cakes that are not filled. The only thing that's certain is that a King Cake is always in the shape of a circle and it's always sprinkled with the colors of Mardi Gras: purple, gold, and green. My brother hates the icing, Dudley can't get enough of it, and I fall somewhere in the middle. So, this year Hank offered to send me a King Cake but I really wanted to make my own so here you have it, my King Cake.


You can find the recipe that I used here and I chose it because it looked like a fairly straightforward brioche base King Cake and it has excellent pictures of the process. The next time I make a King Cake I'm not going to use this recipe, because I have a King Cake in my head that I want to achieve and this wasn't it, but I do think that this was a good recipe to start with. It makes a very sweet brioche dough that smells amazing while it's baking. I don't like filling in my King Cake and many recipes have a filling so that's why I chose the recipe without a filling. The King Cakes that I remember aren't quite as bread-y and it could be my fault but next year I think I'll try a different formula, or something. I think that what I really need is to spend my time sampling real King Cakes again and then I'll have a better idea of what I want. Oh, the plastic baby? I didn't have one but I did hide half of a pecan in there (an acceptable substitution, or so I'm told) and I'm hoping that Dudley will be the one to get it. Dudley & I are going to a Tulane Alumni Mardi Gras shindig tomorrow night and I'm told that there will be King Cake there so hopefully I'll get to taste some and see how mine measures up!