There is all kinds of Mardi Gras awesomeness going on in New Orleans right now and I really miss it! And I really really really miss King Cake! Mmmm…king cake. If you haven’t had King Cake, then you need to make this recipe immediately. King Cake a sweet bread cake, with (usually) a sweet cream cheese filling, topped off with icing and plenty of sparkling sugar in green yellow and purple (green for faith, yellow for power and purple for justice). Inside the cake is a plastic baby and whoever get the slice with the baby has to purchase the next cake. It is delicious and completely addicting.
I’ve always wanted to make a King Cake, but the recipes always looked a tad complicated (injecting the filling?!) and really, who needs to make a King Cake when you live in New Orleans surrounded by bakeries competing to be known as having best King Cake (winner: Randazzos). But then I moved up north, had a snow day with lots of free time and the King Arthur Blog posted King Cupcakes, and while those sounded tasty, I wanted King Cake. As an aside, I love that Saints mania has permeated Norwich, Vermont!
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
So I made the King Arthur King Cake. And it is very close to being awesome. I think it needs a few tweaks and I definitely would like to try it with a cake mold to achieve a more aesthetically appealing cake. A few suggestions/comments:
- Go light with or possibly eliminate the egg white wash. The cake shouldn’t be brown and the wash encourages browning.
- Tent well to eliminate further browning.
- Use a stand mixer if you have one, as the dough is very sticky and would be hard to knead otherwise.
- I took the word “stretch” very literally in the recipe and ended up with a dough that had some holes because I overstretched. A rolling pin can be helpful here.
- The rolling pin will also distribute the dough better – I ended up with one end more dough-y than the other and consequently the cake was a little uneven looking.
- If you like a lot of filling, consider increasing the filling proportions by half (I think doubling would push it too far), some of the filling absorbed into the bread.
- My icing ended up being more buttercream frosting and less pourable icing. So I just spread it on like I would for a cupcake and it was still delicious, if not pourable
- Sadly, I did not import any plastic babies from NOLA when I moved up here, so I used a pecan instead of a baby
But don’t let that list deter you – this is a surprisingly easy recipe and the smell was heavenly. Perfect King Cake smell – cinnamon sweet. Happy Mardi Gras! Laissez les-bons temps roulez!
Lemon Lime 