King Cake update

Photograph © Lori Korleski Richardson

Even a bad King Cake is pretty good. I used a recipe from nolacuisine.com, after ascertaining that the Epicurious one was way beyond my meager baking skills. It came out (to my taste) too dry and flat, and the pecan filling leaked out all over the cookie sheet, but the simple icing was a hit (1 cup powdered sugar to 1 tablespoon bourbon plus coloring). Yet even that I had trouble with; I got food coloring all over my fingers, and the blue seemed intent on overpowering any red I added to get a good shade of purple.

They say no one in New Orleans makes a King Cake; they all buy them from bakeries there. I now know why.

Getting on my King Cake

It's not likely anyone will send me a King Cake this year, so I'm thinking I may have to make one (or more). I'm about to scour my cookbook collection and the Internet for recipes, but if anyone has a favorite, please post a comment or send me a message with it. Gold, purple and green icing, here I come!

A history of King cake

Tuesday, Jan. 6, is Epiphany, which marks the end of the Christmas season. It also marks the beginning of the festivities that lead up to Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, the last blowout before Lent. And a sweet reminder of this is the traditional King cake.

From the "Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink" by John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 175):

King cake. A brioche-style cake made during the Louisiana carnival season, beginning in January and ending at Mardi Gras...By tradition the cake contains a red bean (sometimes covered in gold or silver leaf) or a figurine of the baby Jesus. It is sold widely throughout Louisiana...the person who finds the bean or figurine is promised good luck. There are various stories of the origins of the cake, though most in some way derive from the legend of the Three Kings visiting the infant Jesus in Bethlehem, as described in the New Testament. In the first half of the 16th century France commemorated Kings' Day-the 12th day after Christmas-with a "Twelfth Night cake." A century later King Louis XIV took part in such a feast at which gateau des Rois ("Kings' cake") contained a hidden bean or ceramic figure, as it does to this day. Before the Civil War, American King cakes often contained gold, diamonds, or a valuable instead of beans; after the war, with the end of gala Creole balls in Louisiana, peas, beans, pecans, and coins were used, and in 1871 the tradition of choosing the queen of the Mardi Gras was determined by who drew the prize in the cake...The colors of purple (for justice), green (for faith), and gold (for power) that traditionally tint the cake's icing first appeared in 1872 after the Rex Krewe, a Mardi Gras parade
organization, chose those colors to celebrate that year's festival."