Best recipes for a king cake (Epiphany holiday cake)?

[Buzz Rules]

Best recipes for a king cake (Epiphany holiday cake)?

 

[LSUmiss]

Buy one and have it shipped!
ETA: Will picking up my first of the season tomorrow to send to DS’ school on Thursday!

 

[bcla]

All I know is that you're going to need one of these:

https://www.partycity.com/white-king-cake-babies-811941.html

 

[LuvOrlando]

I've never made one, but if there is a good recipe 'll try it. Not sure where to find a baby in time but my Fontanini is not going in the mix.

 

[NotUrsula]

If you don't care about authenticity and just want tasty, I recommend Holly Clegg's Crescent Roll hack. Makes a really delicious King Cake really quickly. https://thehealthycookingblog.com/how-to-make-king-cake/
Assuming that you want a pastry that will feed a family (or last through a few breakfasts), you'll need 2 cans of refrigerated Crescent Rolls for each cake (which, of course, is not really cake, but pastry.)

The version in the recipe uses cinnamon cream cheese filling, but you can use any filling you like that is dry enough to use in a pastry, including canned pie-filling or lemon curd. My family prefers pecan praline (1/4 cup butter, 1 cup rough-chopped pecans,1.5 cups packed brown sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla. Bring the sugar and butter to a boil in a shiny pan and keep it there, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes exactly. Remove from heat, stir in the pecans and the vanilla. If it is too liquid, add more nuts or a bit more brown sugar; you want it to be a thick paste.

I do disagree with that recipe on the colored icing. IMO, it's much prettier, and less hassle, to keep the glaze white and add sprinkles on top: use purple, green and gold sugar laid down in rough patches or stripes. (I really like adding those little gold coin-shaped sprinkles from Wilton. IMO, the secret to a pretty King Cake is using *gold* colored sugar/sprinkles, rather than yellow.) Here is the same cake with my icing style:


If you cannot get a small baby locally, you can fall back on tradition from the days before little plastic babies were available: use a large, dried edible bean, such as a kidney or lima bean. (It needs to be a dried bean, though; don't use one from a can or frozen.)

PS: You can also use that technique to make all sorts of interesting variations on King Cake, including savory versions. Her crawfish king cake is amazingly good, and has become something of a SuperBowl party tradition in Louisiana: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_r...cle_e67333ea-5c52-11eb-a4f1-97cc5ceb6ddd.html

PS: I also save King Cake babies for re-use; they live in the front corner drawer of my dining room china cabinet. (I had to start making my own King Cake when I moved away from Louisiana; the few you can get here are really not good.)

 

[sibesx2]

I've never made one, but if there is a good recipe 'll try it. Not sure where to find a baby in time but my Fontanini is not going in the mix.

Walmart has packs of plastic babies in their party section with the baby shower stuff.

 

[Southernmiss]

I'm the crazy one who washes our plastic babies from king cakes and saves them in a pill bottle in my kitchen!

Hoping dd will pick up our first king cake of this year up from our local family bakery tomorrow. Son tried today, but they only had blueberry flavor left. He wasn't a fan.

 

[LuvOrlando]

Wondering which groups celebrate with this tradition in January? For me & mine the Epiphany would be revered on a Sunday and we didn't have particular foods or anything, although we did keep our lights up until it had passed. I mostly remember the day being a big celebration for my Greek friends & the cake being a French thing but, then again, the cake was mostly for Fat Tuesday, at least that was when it would come around. It's a nice tradition to share in though, still, I'm curious, it's always interesting how food becomes a traditional anchor of important things

 

[Southernmiss]

Wondering which groups celebrate with this tradition in January? For me & mine the Epiphany would be revered on a Sunday and we didn't have particular foods or anything, although we did keep our lights up until it had passed. I mostly remember the day being a big celebration for my Greek friends & the cake being a French thing but, then again, the cake was mostly for Fat Tuesday, at least that was when it would come around. It's a nice tradition to share in though, still, I'm curious, it's always interesting how food becomes a traditional anchor of important things

Epiphany is a feast in the Catholic church celebrated now the 2nd Sunday after Christmas-so it was January 2nd this year.

Traditional Epiphany is the 12th day after Christmas-January 6th. Also the start of Carnival (Mardi Gras) season in the French (Catholic) settled area of the Gulf Coast mostly between New Orleans and Mobile with spread to Galveston, TX and Pensacola, FL and all parts in between. The season is celebrated formally with balls and decorating floats and parades and krewes and kings and queens and courts until Fat Tuesday (when we have a last hurrah of indulgence), just before the fasting that begins with Ash Wednesday.

But any day is a good day for cake, especially King Cake, which we don't eat all year long, and getting one or two a season is a tradition we look forward to. King cakes are not readily made all year long by bakeries, though some will make a king cake by special request at off times of the year.

We'll send a King cake back to college with our daughter in a couple of weeks, too, to share with friends.

 

[BayouQueen]

I keep purple, green and gold sugar sprinkles in the pantry and toss them on anything easy. Some years it's been on an Entemann's coffee cake, some years on a bundt cake. This year, they are going on top of almond Danishes from Costco. Whatever it is, there will be a celebration.

 

[RedAngie]

My unnecessary opinion.

There is NO best recipe for King Cake, only a least worst one.

I’ve never tasted one that was anything but vile.

 

[NotUrsula]

My unnecessary opinion.

There is NO best recipe for King Cake, only a least worst one.

I’ve never tasted one that was anything but vile.

Honestly, before the Great King Cake Renaissance, most of them were. Many people don't realize this, but the King Cake tradition was really localized in & around New Orleans up until the early 1980s, and there was pretty much one kind you could buy commercially: very dry brioche bread, no filling, drizzled with a thin coating of icing that *might* have had one shake of ground cinnamon in it. You needed coffee to be able to swallow it. I don't know which baker started the marketing revolution, but there was one, in about 1981, and suddenly King Cake was everywhere in Louisiana, and spread outside the state with the rest of the "Cajun food" craze. And there it pretty much froze for the rest of y'all; cinnamon brioche with a little colored icing. Meanwhile, in Louisiana, bakers went crazy with their imaginations; commercial King Cakes became much more tasty, and the popularity of the pre-Lenten Carnival season weekly (and sometimes daily) office KC ritual skyrocketed.

These days in Louisiana it has gotten more difficult to find the old style because it just doesn't sell nearly as well as the fancy-flavored new filled versions. People in the food business elsewhere have heard about the tradition and find it it a good opportunity to push a celebration to boost sales, but they are not as vested in the creative competition to make the best King Cake. *That* has now become very important to bakers in Louisiana, because a good King Cake recipe can now make or break the profitability of a bakery for the entire fiscal year. Bakeries known for good King Cake will sell hundreds every day during Carnival; some set up temporary offsite operations to up that to daily production in the thousands, to satisfy online order demand.

And then, on Ash Wednesday, it stops. Well, for most of them, though some, like Randazzo's, have gotten creative with occasions, and will sell versions of the best sellers with decorations for other holidays & celebrations, (though generally without a baby outside of Carnival season.)

PS: Here is a new article from the Times-Picayune about the economic engine of the King Cake, and how it is being affected by supply shortages and shipping delays: https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/eat-drink/article_b21b0518-6e68-11ec-8cfc-3f31b8e168d8.html