I'm not steeped in the traditions around Mardi Gras or Carnivale. My simple roots growing up in a small unincorporated community, attending a moderate Southern Baptist church, living in and going to school in a rural county just barely in Eastern North Carolina, kept me unwise to the larger world. Customs and faiths and practices that were not Protestant and regional were otherworldly to me. (At around age 12, I asked my new neighbor and classmate from New York, a Catholic, if they were the ones who didn't believe in Jesus.) I'm pretty sure I was well into adulthood, for instance, when I first saw an Ash Wednesday-marked forehead on someone. We might acknowledge the Lenten season at church on Sunday, but I remember no one in my circles of contacts who practiced "giving up" something for it.
All that is (ironically) rather confessional, a bit too much so. I am neither swept up by the partying leading up to the Season of Lent, nor the piety subsequently called for once it commences. But culinary endeavors are a temptation to which I yield. My one recorded prior attempt at making a King Cake, from 2015, did not thrill me, as I recall. Since then, if inspired by the holiday, I have instead made Mardi Gras King Cake cookies, or Mardi Gras-colored sugar cookies. Not so long ago, a newer King Cake recipe popped up on my radar and I saved the recipe to see if my recent yeast dough shenanigans have helped me improve my approach and the corresponding results. In the meantime, I've been advised that King Cake is appropriate any time between January 6th and Mardi Gras...or any time you damn well feel like it!
On the first day of February, I set about making the sweet enriched dough to put aside for an overnight refrigerator rise. The next morning, after it was reported that Punxsutawney Phil predicts six more weeks of winter, I divided it and rolled it out, opted for a sweet cinnamon filling, braided and circled each loaf (cake?), gave each its final rise, and baked them. Once they had cooled, the glazey icing and sparkling sugar were applied in my customarily non-artistic manner.
"Mardi Gras King Cake," from Amy Nash of HouseofNashEats.com. [Published 22 January 2022 / Modified 19 January 2023]
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