[title subtitle=”RECIPE: courtesy Stacey Little, SouthernBite.com
WORDS: Catherine Frederick
image: Jeromy Price”][/title]
I’ve seen King Cakes before at bakeries, but I’ve never bought one, and certainly never attempted to make one. And to be honest, I didn’t really know they were anything more than a cake with a plastic baby baked inside that you eat during Mardi Gras – the cake, not the baby.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to bake and make a huge mess in the kitchen, but when I found this recipe over at our friend Stacey Little’s website SouthernBite.com, I had to try it. It was just too simple not to! I did do a little research and found out that this is more than just a cake – it’s tradition.
The Southern tradition of the King Cake is heavily associated with Mardi Gras, which some call Carnival. French and Spanish colonists first brought the King Cake to the South, but King Cake parties and celebrations originated in French Louisiana back in the eighteenth century. The traditional King Cake is a ring of twisted cinnamon-roll style dough topped with sugar or icing in purple, yellow, and green, with a hidden trinket in the dough. Then, sometime in 1972, a small bakery in Picayune, Mississippi started adding fillings. Bam! Consider yourself informed.
No matter the recipe or the filling, one thing remains the same. The custom of adding the trinket (some use a plastic or porcelain baby, others use a plastic gold coin), is always added. In the South, whoever receives the piece of cake with the trinket must provide the next King Cake or host the next Mardi Gras party. So consider yourself warned – you get that baby, you’re on the hook for the next Mardi Gras throw-down.
Now, you could slave over an authentic King Cake recipe that’s way more involved, but for those who want to experience a little Mardi Gras tradition in no time flat, this recipe is for you.
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Ingredients
- (2) 17oz cans of jumbo cinnamon rolls with icing
- (each can had 5 rolls)
- 2oz cream cheese
- sugar sprinkles in purple, yellow, and green
- plastic baby (I found mine at Walmart in the party section)
Method
Preheat oven to 350°. Spray Bundt or tube pan with non-stick cooking spray. Open (2) 17.5oz cans of cinnamon rolls and set aside icing for later. Line bottom of pan with rolls. You may have to squeeze them in there. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until the cinnamon rolls are no longer gooey. Turn out onto platter to cool. Mix icing from roll container with 2oz of softened cream cheese. Once the cake is cool, spread icing on top and decorate with alternating sugar sprinkles in purple, yellow, and green.
