Mardi Gras King Cake

Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. Carnival! The time of year to let loose and enjoy yourself. And, time for delicious sweet treats!

Every year I make king cake. It's a bread-like cinnamon yeasted cake topped with a sweet lemony glaze and gold, green, and purple sprinkles. There are lots of different versions of this cake, some with a pecan filling, some with a cream cheese topping, but I like this version the best. It's adapted from a recipe by John Besh, a famous New Orleans chef.

Traditionally, there's a little trinket or plastic baby inserted into the finished cake. It's said that whoever gets the piece of cake with the baby gets to buy the next cake for the next Carnival party. Many countries have their own versions of king cake, and this one is from Louisiana and the Gulf Coast area. It's a braided round cake, and the sprinkles are always the traditional Mardi Gras colors: purple for justice, gold for power, and green for faith.

Since I've made this a few times before, it was just a matter of finding the recipe and executing it. The dough was simple, kind of sticky but very elastic and rose up very well. I had a hard time rolling out the three ropes to braid them due to lack of counter space. But I managed ok. After a second rise, and a quick bake, the beautiful braid was done!

While the cake cooled, I whipped up the glaze, which is just lemon juice and powdered sugar. Getting the consistency right is the key. In fact, the first time I made the glaze it wasn't enough, so I made more to add on top after I had used the sprinkles. In fact, I've made this cake for so many years that I'm running out of gold, green, and purple sprinkles. Time for a trip to the cake decorating store!

Although I didn't have a plastic baby or fava bean to put in the cake, everyone enjoyed it anyways. It's a yearly tradition that I look forward to every year.

Mardi Gras

Last week my friend John challenged me to make King Cake cupcakes, for Mardi Gras. Last year I made a version of this, but it was a cinnamon vanilla cupcake topped with a glaze and colored sugars. This time, I wanted to make something closer to the traditional King Cake, which is more of a bread than a cake.

So I found a good recipe, from a real New Orleans chef, and tried to adapt it for cupcakes. It was a cinnamon and lemon- laced bread-like dough.

They looked cute, not much like cupcakes, more like little balls of dough. I had enough to make a King Cake as well, which turned out great. I love the braid, and working with dough is so fun and almost therapeutic.
I think maybe either the yeast wasn't fresh enough, or I was too impatient and didn't let it rise properly, because both the cake and cupcakes seemed kind of heavy and more like bread than it should have been. So some adjustment is needed in order to perfect this recipe.


The traditional topping for a King Cake is a sweet glaze, with purple, green and gold sprinkles. So that's what I did on both.

All in all, it turned out delicious, but this needs more work. There's always next year!

Mardi Gras cupcakes

So, in a bit of a variation on the Martha challenge, I made cupcakes for my friend's Mardi Gras party. These were meant to resemble King Cake, the traditional cake of Mardi Gras. Even tho it's not really a cake, it's more like cinnamon roll dough.
The cupcakes were adapted from Martha's Snickerdoodle recipe. I made the cupcakes per her recipe, but switched up the frosting. King Cakes have a glaze on them, so I made a lemon glaze, and topped it with yellow, green and purple sprinkles, the official colors of Mardi Gras.


They turned out great, I even put a plastic baby into one! The tradition is, if you find the baby, you have to bring the cake next year. Not sure why it's a baby, but it's cute :) I just love any occasion to try something new.