#5: notes on king cakes -a very late post
local loyalties, cycles, plastic babies
(Here’s a post I had intended to write a few weeks ago, but life got busy. I didn’t want to wait until next year to talk about king cakes, if only to briefly relive the realm that you slip into and stumble out of each M.G. season.)
Another Mardi Gras has come to pass. We meandered through the Marigny, loosely following the St. Anne’s parade amidst the multi-colored explosion of costumes, dancers, drinkers, revelers. We found friends on every other street, we gathered at the Mississippi river, we danced on the grassy patches of Press Street to DJs, the bartenders from Vaughan’s slinging drinks from the back of a truck from morning til night. I strung tangerines through wire and adorned a faux-flower head-wreath that I wore for twelve hours, so that even when my skull started to ache, I felt regal. I was fed multiple times: a friend inviting revelers for pancakes and eggs before the festivities (scrambled eggs with parmesan cheese, fluffy pancakes, dozens of bottles of pre-mixed cocktails a bartender had brought in a basket on the table). Sausage “savory cinnamon rolls” and strong pour-over coffee at the next friend’s house, a bite of someone else’s bologna sandwich hours later. I handed out tangerines to friends and familiars. My own late night meal: leftover curry noodles and tofu, then a bowl of mint chip ice cream. I felt the remnants of the day — the cold and the wintery sun, the hours of walking and dancing and talking since eight in the morning — settle under my skin.
Last year, we ate home made gumbo on a front lawn dance party, we ate potato chips at the river with a bottle of sparkling wine passed between a group of us. I don’t remember how we capped off the night, possibly leftovers from the fridge, and a long night of sleep.
The Mardi Gras season in New Orleans has a reigning food in the king cake. King cake stems from pagan European traditions and appears in cultures with Catholic origins in forms like the galette de rois and rosocnes de reyes (I was in Mexico City on January 6th of 2023 and 2022, where throughout the day people carried boxes of roscones de reyes with colorful candied fruit baked on top). Like a marker of time, the cake appears on January 6th, the Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, kicking off the Christian Epiphanytide and the Mardi Gras season. A circular cake for a cycle that renews every year.
In New Orleans, king cakes are ring-shaped, usually brioche-based and cream-filled, glazed and sprinkled with stripes of purple, yellow, and green. Many are achingly sweet, pull your teeth out sweet, call-your-attention sweet. You only want a bite, but you eat them all season long.
When I was first introduced to the New Orleans King Cake Experience, it was the pandemic Mardi Gras in 2021, and all of the parades and festivities had more or less been cancelled. King cake was one of the few ways to salvage the holiday. I was working on the pastry team at an Uptown restaurant, and every few days a coworker brought in a king cake from a new place. Strong opinions filled the kitchen, as it did throughout workplaces in Southeast Louisiana, about king cake loyalties. (I also suspect that to indoctrinate a newcomer like me was a minor thrill, a way for my coworkers to play out the Mardi Gras spirit that would usually be filling up the streets this time of year.)
Even with Mardi Gras in full swing, king cakes cause a culinary stir. A friend who grew up on the North Shore said his mother used to work overnights at a local bakery during king cake season. Manny Randazzo’s opens in mid-December only for king cake production, Hi-Do, Haydel’s, Joe Gambino’s, and Antoine’s are long-running favorites, stacked in their establishments or grocery stores come Mardi Gras season. Bywater Bakery fills cases and labels “Do not Touch - Preorders Only” of their chantilly flavored cakes. And every spot does it differently. Brennan’s imparts its Pepto Bismol pink into the king cake frosting, Latin American market Norma’s makes a guava and cream cheese confection, Mediterranean Saba folds a pomegranate caramel through their layers of brioche. The coveted Dong Phuong king cakes sell out for pre-order well in advance, and you have to go to New Orleans East before noon or to what is essentially a designated retailer to grab one.
For long-time New Orleans residents, some king cake preferences go generations deep. In that sense, the king cake becomes a tactile trading card of bakery brand loyalty. On the one hand, it’s obvious and necessary marketing: everyone wants to get in on king cake cash. Having baked my fair share of them in restaurants, they are labor-intensive and disruptive to the usual production schedule, a relentless add-on to the already busy Christmas season, and a chance for local establishments to affirm their place in the city. Most interestingly, the generational king cake loyalty strikes me as a tactile food tradition in a country that is increasingly losing such traditions in lieu of ultra-customized diets.
One element of the tradition is the plastic baby, sometimes a fêve (and traditionally a bean or pea), placed inside the cake. In its centuries of iterations, finding the bean or figurine has had a range of festive significance. Depending on when and where, the bean could have meant hosting the next king cake party, buying a round of drinks, a mark of good fortune, being King or Queen for the festivities. In New Orleans, whoever gets the slice with the baby has to buy the next king cake. Though parties during the season often have a king cake as part of the spread, the king cake baby chain most often happens at a workplace, which could point to a shift in how much time and value is spent where we work (maybe an exploration for a different post!).
A ring-shaped cake to mark the Epiphany cycle, or a season of harvest and famine, indulgence and fasting. A cake in city-wide circulation, as ritualistic as the walk to the Mississippi River every Mardi Gras day.
