SHAKE THE SUGAR KING CAKE

Photo courtesy of the author.

The Collared Contessa's King Cake

By Laurie Brock

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Yield: 16 servings

Ingredients:

• 2 containers of refrigerated cinnamon rolls (I use Pillsbury’s cinnamon rolls with crème cheese frosting)
• 1 ½ cups of sugar, divided (or more…remember – Jesus’ love is lavish)
• Purple, green, and gold food coloring

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven according to the cinnamon roll container. Pop open the can and set aside the crème topping. Lightly grease a baking sheet or (preferred method) line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Separate the rolls, and slightly mush each one into an oval shape (don’t flatten them), and arrange them into an oval on the baking sheet, cinnamon side up. The rolls should touch each other, but not be pushed together. Bake for the time on the container.
3. Remove from oven and let cool slightly. While you’re letting the cake cool, put a half cup of sugar in 3 small containers with lids (all those Talenti containers you have stuck in a cabinet are perfect for this). Add purple (red+blue) food coloring to one jar, green to another, and gold/yellow to another. A note: blending red and blue make a slightly darker purple, so if you want a bright purple color, buy purple food coloring instead of making your own. Put on the lid and shake to mix. And really, the length of the Lord’s Prayer prayed is a wonderful measure of time. If you want to make the colors more intense, add a few drops more and shake until desired hue is reached.
4. When the cake is mostly cooled, insert the bean or baby into one of the slices. Spread the crème icing onto the cake. Alternating colors, sprinkle the sugar onto the crème icing. Serve.

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When I served churches along the Gulf Coast, without fail, on the first Sunday closest to Twelfth Night, it appeared at coffee hour. And it stayed, each week its own version of The Great Mardi Gras Bake Off between various bakers of the church, until The Last Sunday after the Epiphany.  Then it was buried with the Alleluias: the sweet, sugary, sticky, filled with crème and jellies, and oh my goodness, WHAT is this amazing stuff of King Cake?

King Cake, known by as many names as the Last Sunday after Pentecost, likely originated as a way to use up the remaining flour, butter, and special ingredients of the feasts of the Christmas season. It was traditionally eaten on Twelfth Night, but as the celebration of Epiphany expanded with the popularity of Mardi Gras, the King Cake found a new role. The earliest King Cakes were likely most similar to modern day panatones. Now, they range from exquisite French gateaux to ovals of filled sponge slathered with crème icing and covered with purple, green, and gold sugar.

What does seem to be consistent is the practice of placing a bean or, in modern versions, a ceramic baby Jesus in part of the cake. The person whose slice contains the bean/baby Jesus is: crowned the Lord (or King or Queen) of Misrule, or must take it to the nearest church on Candlemas Day to be presented, or will have good luck the rest of the year, or must bring the King Cake to the next party. 

My great aunt made King Cake from scratch, like gather the eggs from outside, grate the butter into the flour, knead the dough by hand, let it rise, punch it down, knead it again, let it rise again, then intricately braid it into a perfect oval by hand. She also had an assortment of various fillings that ranged from rich vanilla cremes to my favorite: raspberry and crème blend. 

She taught me to make the sugar topping, holy sugar, she called it. Place the sugar in three mason jars, add the food coloring to each jar (always the colors of Mardi Gras – purple, green, and gold), and shake. The purple, she said, was to remind us the Baby Jesus was the King of Kings. The green meant he was Lord of all Creation.  The gold represented the wealth of love he brought us. I have never found any of these particular meanings verified, but I’m staying with them. Shake the mixture for as long as it takes to say the Lord’s Prayer, then sprinkle liberally on the cake. Don’t be chintzy – Jesus’s love is lavish. 

I still love to bake, but in the aftermath of Advent and Christmas and the preparations for Lent, gathering eggs or hand kneading dough until just-so is not a spiritual exercise in which I want to partake. 

But I still love King Cake. 

A quick internet search will lead you to any number of amazing King Cake recipes if you want to make them from the most basic ingredients. But if that seems to be a bit more work than time allows, I share my version that’s slightly less involved, but still lets you to shake the sugar as you pray the Lord’s Prayer.