A year ago this week I was cutting a King Cake into slices, trying not to remember which one had the “baby” as I packaged them up for my neighbors in Portal, Arizona.
Our King Cake was the dessert of a “Fat Tuesday” meal, one of 10 three-course meals I catered with my 89-year-old cooking partner, Zola, during the COVID lockdown winter in a very small town in the Chiricahua Mountains. Since nobody could travel or go to restaurants, for 10 weeks our “Social Distance Cafe” roamed all over the world offering a 3-course culinary journey of a starter, a main and a dessert.
Fifteen or so people and couples took us up on it, and in addition to New Orleans, we also taste-traveled to both Sonoran and Oaxacan Mexico, India, Morocco, Italy, France, the Caribbean and beyond.
Bywater Bakery King Cakes are inventive to say the least – with this one featuring apples along with the traditional cinnamon. Photo Credit: Christopher Porché West via Wikimedia Commons 
It is fitting that Vietnamese bakery Dong Phuong makes what many swear is the finest King Cake in new Orleans (and thus, the hardest to get: put your order in for next year, really!) An immigrant food brought to a melting pot city and perfected by different immigrants. A tasty story! Photo Credit: Infrogmation of Wikimedia Commons 
A traditional New Orleans King Cake from Haydel Bakery, one of many that vie for customers between the Epiphany, aka Three Kings Day, and Fat Tuesday. Lent starts Wednesday! Most bakeries put the “baby” symbolizing the Christ child, on the side. This one has the also-common king figurine. Photo Credit: Infrogmation of New Orleans via Wikimedia Commons. 
Frey Smoked Meats makes a King Cake milkshake! Photo Credit: Frey’s Facebook Page. 
Some King Cakes, like this one from Manny Randazzo, are more focused on flash. No doubt why it ended up in a photo shoot in a Louisiana Senator’s DC office. Photo Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Most of the dishes served by the Social Distance Cafe I had eaten before. During my Southern Food Road Tour I ate a slice of the King Cake Susan Spicer gifted her staff at Bayona the Saturday morning I got a biscuit-making lesson from the New Orleans restaurateur. I also saw gorgeous finished King Cakes at Lea’s of LeCompte in Monroe, LA made by Toby Traylor.
Toby Traylor displays his King Cakes at Lea’s of Lecomte 
With Susan Spicer in front of Bayona, her Louisiana-themed diner in New Orleans. 
A slice of cream cheese-filled King Cake shared with me by the staff of Bayona Restaurant, the first Louisiana-themed Susan Spicer restaurant in her New Orleans portfolio.
Classic King Cake is basically a big braided cinnamon roll topped with colorful icing that’s eaten between the Epiphany and the start of Lent. The kings refer to the “Three Kings,” who legend has it traveled to see the Christ child, though they are also referred to as “Wise Men”, despite an evident lack of overlap between these two categories. Three Kings Day, aka the 12th Day of Christmas, is always on January 6, though some New Orleans bakeries jump the gun and make Christmas King Cakes frosted red and green. The season officially ends today, and I bet there are some bakers in Louisiana who are SO happy about that.
Assorted Three Wisemen/Kings (Baby Def Easier to Hide)
Three hipster Wise Men come bearing Amazon deliveries on Segways in this ironic nativity – one of 800+ collected and annually displayed by Centenary United Methodist Church in my current HQ of Lawrence, KS. Photo Credit: Carrie Miller 
I was surprised to see how smiling were the faces of the Jemez chieftains, given how badly they got took in the give-and-take of a “strongly encouraged” religious conversion. About those expensive gifts: they shouldn’t have. Photo Credit: Carrie Miller 
Flying Poodle Angel, part of a canine nativity. Unrelated to King Cakes entirely. I just couldn’t help myself. Photo Credit: Carrie Miller
King Cake Recipe For Office Drama?
Tradition says if you find the hidden “baby” you win the honor of buying the next King Cake, which is more like playing Russian roulette than it is winning the lottery, since $20 is really the least you can spend for a decent bakery-made King Cake (and bringing a grocery store King Cake will get you a frosty reception in the break room). King Cake obligations and expectations have been known to create strife among co-workers when CERTAIN PEOPLE never seem to end up with the honors. Some offices even post explicit rules parsing what it means to “get the baby”:
Our King Cake recipe produced none of this drama, because the person who “got” the baby didn’t actually get it. One of our subscribers sent an email asking to skip dessert for this week. We had offered a free-meal prize for whoever found it, which ended up being me when I ate her dessert for breakfast and found the small ceramic bird hidden inside. (It just seemed more fitting for a birding mecca full of retired scientists than a plastic baby Jesus.) The original term ‘féve’ means fava, the dried bean used as “the baby” in olden-times, before party stores and hard plastics came into their own.
So what ELSE is inside the King Cake?
King Cake is a filled, enriched dough, similar to brioche, so sugar, milk, salt, butter, eggs, and yeast added to all-purpose (not cake) flour. It is instead made by some with puff pastry. Traditional King Cake Recipes have a filling of butter, sugar and cinnamon, though there is really no end to what can be stuffed in them. Dessert fillings like pralines, cream cheese, caramel apples and boozy Bananas Foster are just the start. There are even savory King Cake recipes, with less-sweet brioche stuffed with all manner of meats and cheeses; even crawfish!
Ringed to mimic a crown (and facilitate even baking) it is powdered-sugar-iced and blinged out in green, gold and purple. Those have been Mardi Gras’ traditional colors since 1892, when Mardi Gras King Rex decreed it so. King Cake’s debut in New Orleans and surrounds may have been as early as 1718 and is credited to Basque immigrants by American Cake author Ann Byrn.
These people are fully clothed…with suits and HATS in this Mardi Gras parade pic dated between 1890 and 1910 by the Library of Congress 
“French-style” King Cake is by some accounts the OG: puff pastry artfully wrapped around a marzipan filling. A bit more monochromatic than now-traditional NOLA King Cake. Photo Credit: Infrogmation via Creative Commons.
My recipe is based on Barbara Bakes‘ recipe, though I doubled the filling, just as I do when I make less monstrously sized cinnamon rolls. Mine also includes a couple of additional ingredients, including anise, a popular flavor in Sonoran Mexican baking, a major regional influence during my time living in Southeast Arizona. Next time I make it, I plan to add in my prickly-pear and chiltepin spiced pecans, a Wild West praline with a kick.
* While it’s always on a Tuesday, the date of Mardi Gras swings wildly, whiptailing behind Easter, which itself is squirrely because Christianity wanted to have its story straight with Judaism, so that Easter neatly follows Passover, aka the Last Supper. Since the Hebrew calendar is tied on the moon, Easter roams the calendar between March 22 to April 25, landing this year on April 17.
Traveling Between Meals 
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