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!

Martha Challenge #31- A Variation: (Mexican) Chocolate Cupcakes

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I wanted to make a themed cupcake. I've made margarita cupcakes many times, and Mexican Chocolate only once. So I decided to adapt one of Martha's recipes for Mexican Chocolate. These are regular chocolate cupcakes, but with the addition of cinnamon and chili.
Surprisingly, Martha does not have a lot of chocolate cupcake recipes in her book. I used her one-bowl chocolate cupcake recipe, which was amazing! Super easy, and the cupcakes turned out great. Big domed tops, nice and fluffy, and very chocolatey.


I added espresso powder to bring out the chocolate flavor, and cinnamon and a dash of chili powder to give it some spice. They smelled amazing baking!
Next, the frosting. Again, Martha does not have many chocolate frostings, and the only ones she did have made entirely too much frosting for the amount of cupcakes I had. So I relied on one of my own tried and true recipes, again adding cinnamon and chili powder.


I topped the cupcakes with red and green sanding sugar, to indicate the Mexican flag. I'll definitely be using this recipe again, it seems foolproof.

Martha Cupcake Challenge #26- Snickerdoodle cupcakes!

This is actually a continuation of the Mardi Gras cupcakes. I had made the base for these, the cinnamon sugar cupcakes, so I decided to finish them off. The cake recipe I made exactly, and these came out big and domed, just how I like them! They smelled so good while baking.


I used a different frosting than Martha recommended. She uses a 7-minute frosting, but it takes me more like 20 minutes to make, and I didn't have the time. So instead I used another frosting in her book, Honey-cinnamon frosting. This is a traditional buttercream, but with honey and cinnamon. It was super tasty.


I piped the frosting on, sprinkled it with cinnamon-sugar mix, then added another dollop on top. At first it didn't look like I'd have enough, but I had enough for at least one more cupcake.

ps- Snickerdoodle comes from a mispronunciation of the German word schneckennudeln, which means crinkly noodles. Weird!

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.

Variation on Martha's cupcakes: Red Hot Velvet!

So, since Valentine's Day is this weekend, I decided to spice up Martha's red velvet cupcakes. I have made these before, in the Martha Challenge #5. I changed up the recipe a bit, added my own twist! I used more cocoa powder, because I like a tastier cupcake. In fact, I used cocoa rouge, a reddish natural cocoa, to enhance the red color of the cupcakes. I also added cinnamon to the batter, to spice them up a bit.

These cupcakes turned out a lot darker than before, due to the increase in cocoa. I personally don't like when red velvet is like atomic red, I prefer a more natural red look. Still these probably weren't red enough. They smelled amazing!
I then topped them with traditional cream cheese frosting. I also added cinnamon to the frosting, to bring out the cinnamon flavor in the cakes. I need to adjust this recipe too, it's way too sticky and tart for my liking.

Then it was time to bust out the sprinkles! I topped some with light and dark pink sanding sugar, and the rest with hearts and kisses sprinkles. I added a good dose of red edible glitter to finish them off.
My husband had one, and he said he couldn't tell there was cinnamon in them, but I definitely could. Perhaps a little more tweaking is required before this one goes into the recipe book.

Martha Cupcake Challenge #23- Chocolate Spice Cupcakes

Feeling a bit bored this afternoon, so I decided to make whatever I had all the ingredients for. Chocolate-Spice cupcakes win! These are yummy dark chocolate cupcakes with cinnamon and ginger. The recipe calls for nutmeg, but I hate that spice, so I didn't put it in. I meant to add instant espresso powder, but forgot. Next time! They also have molasses, which I had a bit leftover. I added a splash of vanilla too, because I think every cupcake tastes better with vanilla.
This was a very runny batter, made 12 exactly. Altho the recipe says to fill halfway, I filled them 3/4, and they came out perfectly domed.


The recipe calls for these to be inverted, then topped with a chocolate ganache glaze, but I used liners and kept them upright. I dipped each top in ganache, and had a ton left over. I guess I'll be making something else later in the week. The tops are nice and shiny. I put them in the fridge to let the ganache set up. They smell great, chocolatey and spicy. These would probably taste good with some hot spice, like cayenne added. All in all, a great recipe (with a few adjustments).