Easy and Yummy New Orleans King Cake Recipe

It is New Orleans traditions that in fact hundreds of king cakes are eaten during Mardi Gras every single year.

King cake

is a kind of a cake that associated in many of countries with the festival at the end of the Christmas season, the festival is named Epiphany. In other place, the cake also associated with the pre-Lenten celebration that known as Mardi Gras party.

According to history, roughly 300 years ago, as a dry French bread- the King Cake is a type of the dough with sugar on the top and a bean inside is now a sweet, sugary and iced. The King Cake are made of a cinnamon-filled dough with the hollow circle shape. The cake is also glazed topping and sprinkled with colored sugar. In New Orleans, Hundreds of thousands of King Cake are eaten during the Carnival season.

The cake has its history, traditionally, a small plastic or porcelain baby is hidden inside the king cake. It is usually gold, purple or green to represent the colors of the holiday. Originally, the plastic baby was placed into the cake to symbolized baby Jesus. The Fava beans or the Vicia beans were also use to represent Jesus.

But nowadays, the baby symbolized the prosperity and luck to whoever finds the baby in her/his slice of the cake. In some tradition, someone who finds the baby will be crowned as the “king” or the “queen” for the evening. Which that person is also has responsible to buy the cake in the next celebration in new year, or throwing for the next Mardi Gras party.

Many bakers is now placing the plastic baby doll outside the cake and not hiding the cake from the customer anymore. Cause, if they place the doll inside the cake there’s a potential of customers choking or swallowing the baby, and the bakers want to stay clean they also don’t want to put their customer on danger. The king cake has many variation but today we’re going to make the king cake with the original recipe from the New Orleans. And here’s the recipe.

Ingredients of How to Make King Cake :

  • 2 packages dry yeast
  • 2 tablespoon sugar
  • 1/2 cup warm water
  • 4 cups flour
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 tablespoon lemon rind
  • 1/2 cup warm milk
  • 2 cups melted unsalted butter, cooled
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 1/2 cup candied citron, chopped (optionally)
  • Sugar colored (green, yellow and purple)
  • 2 cups of powder sugar
  • 2 tablespoon of lemon juice
  • 2 tablespoon water

Ingredients of How to Make Glazed:

  • 2 cups of powder sugar
  • 2 tablespoon of lemon juice

Instructions of How to Make King Cake:

  1. First of all you can start by mixing the yeast, 2 tablespoon of sugar and add warm water and give the good stir until it’s mixed well.
  2. Prepare the medium bowl add the flour into the bowl, add the dry ingredients such as sugar, salt, nutmeg mix it until it’s mixed well and add lemon rind and milk, whisk it well and add the unsalted butter. Remember, if you’re just melted your butter, let it cool first before you pour the butter into the dough. Once you add the butter, stir it again and add the egg yolks and keep mix it.
  3. Check your mixed yeast and sugar, if you see there’s bubble comes out, it means that you yeast is ready to mix with the dough you make. Pour the yeast and keep stir it until the dough is well blended. The last ingredients is really optional, if you want you can add some candied citron to you dough and mix it up. If you found your dough has became thicker, pour the dough to the clean table or anyplace that is okay to knead your dough until it is nice and elastic. It might take 5 or 6 minutes until your dough is nice and smooth.
  4. Once it is done, place the dough to the medium bowl or bigger bowl that has been spray with non-stick cooking spray so the dough will not be sticken on the bottom of your bowl. And cover the top of the bowl with a plastic wrap and just let it inflate for about 90 minutes.
  5. After 90 minutes you should have your dough with doubled size. Now we’re gonna punch it down and roll it cylinder. Don’t forget to hiding the plastic baby doll inside of the cake and make sure that your baby doll is big enough, so someone who get this baby on their slice they can see it and they don’t choked it.
  6. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F and bake the cake for about 45 minutes. Once that is done, remove the can from the oven and let it cooled completely.
  7. Once the cake is cooled, we’re gonna make a simple glaze by mixing 2 cups of powder sugar, 2 tablespoon of lemon juice and a little water and just whisk it up until it well blended. After you get the right consistency of the glazed, use a metal spoon to drizzle the entire cake with the glazed.
  8. Next, add the sugar colored. All these three sugar colored has its meaning, the purple is define justice, green represents faith and yellow is a power. You just need to sprinkle all over the top, you can also do the section of the color over the top of the cake.

Now, the king cake is ready to be served. With this special and original recipe of the King Cake you can bring some Mardi Gras party euphoria to your home. And just enjoy every slice of the special king cake.

Easy and Yummy New Orleans King Cake Recipe 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 vote

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