Mardi Gras King Cake
Home » COOK » Recipes » Baking » Cakes »The final recipe I’m sharing from our Around the World Date Night, where we “visited” New Orleans and Mardi Gras is for King Cake.
Some how I knew about King Cake at Mardi Gras, so wanted to make one for our date night. Here is what Wiki says about King Cake, just so you know too :D
A king cake (sometimes rendered as kingcake, kings’ cake, king’s cake, or three kings cake) is a type of cake associated with the festival of Epiphany in the Christmas season in a number of countries, and in other places with the pre-Lenten celebrations of Mardi Gras / Carnival. In the United States, Carnival is traditionally observed in the Southeastern region of the country, particularly in New Orleans, Mobile, AL, other towns and cities of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, on the southeast Texas island of Galveston, and Louisiana. In this region, the king cake is closely associated with Mardi Gras traditions and is served throughout the Carnival season, which lasts from Epiphany Eve to Fat Tuesday.
The cake has a small trinket (often a small plastic baby, said to represent Baby Jesus) inside (or sometimes placed underneath), and the person who gets the piece of cake with the trinket has various privileges and obligations.
After reading various recipes on how to make a King Cake, I made up my own version…whether it is authentic is up for debate! But it turned out delicious, and I would make my King Cake again ;)
Since I didn’t have a plastic baby to put on my King Cake, I just made toppers using the free printable I shared last week and stuck those in instead.
We ate our King Cake with some of the Bananas Foster I had made for dessert – was lush!!
Follow The Purple Pumpkin Blog’s board Mardi Gras on Pinterest.
Mardi Gras King Cake
Ingredients
- 1 can croissant pastry
- 200g soft cream cheese
- 125g icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp demerara Sugar
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
For the icing topping
- 2 tbsp icing sugar
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- water
For the coloured sugar sprinkles
- demerara sugar
- purple, green and yellow liquid food colourings (or paste mixed with a tiny drop of water)
Instructions
- In a bowl, mix together the cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla extra to form a paste.
- Pop open the can of croissant pastry and carefully unroll. You'll see that the triangles of pastry and lightly scored between each one - kinda smoosh them together to fill in the gaps (best way I can describe it!)
- Gently roll out the pastry to make it a bit wider.
- Mix the cinnamon and demerara sugar together in a bowl and then sprinkle all over the pastry.
- Spread the paste filling down along the middle of the pastry lengthways. Sprinkle with more cinnamon if you wish
- Starting at one end of the pastry, fold over to cover the fillling and squeeze together to seal, brush on some water to help it stick.
- Carefully form into a ring and place onto a greased flat baking sheet - you may need an extra pair of hands to help!
- Cook in a 200C oven for 10-15 minutes until the pastry is golden, some of the filling may ooze out, but it wasn't too much when I made it.
- Whilst the King Cake is cooking, make the topping by mixing the icing sugar and cinnamon together and adding water a tablespoon at a time to make a runny paste.
- Take the cake out of the oven when cooked and transfer to a serving plate. Pour the cinnamon icing over the top whilst warm and cover with either shop bought sugar sprinkles, or if you can't find them make your own, quite easily by placing a couple of spoonfuls of demerara sugar into a plastic food bag (one for each colour) add a drop of food colouring and shaking about until the sugar becomes coloured.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 1 Serving Size: 1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 1962Total Fat: 99gSaturated Fat: 57gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 30gCholesterol: 289mgSodium: 1243mgCarbohydrates: 252gFiber: 8gSugar: 195gProtein: 24g
This site uses Nutritionix to provide estimated nutrition. Nutritional information is always approximate and will depend on the quality of ingredients used and serving sizes. If you need exact calories and macros, please do your own calculations.