mariadnoca
Moderator
I'll add a recipe to keep it official, but just wanted to give a "have a great" day shout out. I think this recipe came originally from Bubba. I've made it several times over the years. smileys/smile.gif
King Cake - Traditional New Orleans Recipe
(See cook’s notes at the end of recipe.)
Ingredients
1/2 cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees)
2 packages active dry yeast
1/2 cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar
3 1/2 - 4 1/2 cups flour unsifted
1 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 cup warm milk
5 egg yolks
1 stick butter cut into slices and softened, plus 2 tablespoons more softened butter
1 egg slightly beaten with 1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1" plastic baby doll (find at cake decorating store or I found them at Michael’s)
Directions
Pour the warm water into a small shallow bowl, and sprinkle yeast and 2 teaspoons sugar into it. Allow the yeast and sugar to rest for three minutes then mix thoroughly. Set bowl in a warm place for ten minutes, or until yeast bubbles up and mixture almost doubles in volume.
Combine 3 1/2 cups of flour, remaining sugar, nutmeg and salt, and sift into a large mixing bowl. Stir in lemon zest. Separate center of mixture to form a hole and pour in yeast mixture and milk. Add egg yolks and, using a wooden spoon, slowly combine dry ingredients into the yeast/milk mixture. When mixture is smooth, beat in 8 tablespoons butter (1 tablespoon at a time) and continue to beat 2 minutes, or until dough can be formed into a medium-soft ball.
Place ball of dough on a lightly floured surface and knead like bread. While kneading, sprinkle up to 1 cup more of flour (1 tablespoon at a time) over the dough. When dough is no longer sticky, knead 10 minutes more until shiny and elastic. (See note below)
Using a pastry brush, coat the inside of a large bowl evenly with one tablespoon softened butter. Place dough ball in the bowl and rotate until the entire surface is buttered. Cover bowl with a moderately thick kitchen towel and place in a draft-free spot for about 1 1/2 hours, or until the dough doubles in volume. (Can be made up to this point a day ahead – see note)
Using a pastry brush, coat a large baking sheet with one tablespoon of butter and set aside.
Remove dough from bowl and place on lightly floured surface. Using your fist punch dough down forcefully. Sprinkle cinnamon over the top, pat and shake dough into a cylinder. Twist dough to form a curled cylinder and loop cylinder onto the buttered baking sheet. Pinch the ends together to complete the circle. Cover dough with towel and set it in draft-free spot for 45 minutes, or until the circle of dough doubles in volume.
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
Brush top and sides of cake with egg wash and bake on middle rack of oven for 25 to 35 minutes until golden brown. Place cake on wire rack to cool. If desired, you can hide the plastic baby in the cake at this time buy pushing it through bottom crust.
Colored sugars
Green, purple, & yellow paste
12 tablespoons sugar
Buy colored sugars pre-made or: Squeeze a dot of green paste in palm of hand. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar over the paste and rub together quickly. Place this mixture on wax paper and wash hands to remove color. Repeat process for other 2 colors. Place aside.
Icing
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 - 6 tablespoons water
Combine sugar, lemon juice and 3 tablespoons water until smooth. If icing is too stiff, add more water until spreadable. Spread icing over top of cake. Immediately sprinkle the colored sugars in individual rows consisting of about 2 rows of green, purple and yellow.
Cake is served in 2" - 3" pieces.
Maria’s Notes:
I use my oven to get bread to rise, if doing this turn oven to lowest setting while you prep ingredients. Then turn it off when you put dough into rise.
I did NOT knead this by hand. You can use a Kitchen Aid/stand mixer with a bread hook or in my case I used my Food Processor with the dough blade.
If making a day ahead cover bowl with damp towel and then seal with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Then follow steps to form in circle, etc. and place back in warmed oven to rise (after an hour it hadn’t risen so I turned oven to lowest setting to speed up the process – check it about every 30 mins or so.)
TWELFTH NIGHT OR KING'S CAKE
This is a Creole cake whose history is the history of the famous New Orleans carnivals celebrated in song and stories. The "King's Cake," or Gateau de Roi, is inseparably connected with the origin of our now world-famed carnival balls. In fact, they owe their origin to the old Creole custom of choosing a king and queen on King's Day, or Twelfth Night.
Go into any office in Louisiana during Mardi Gras season and you're almost sure to see employees feeding on a donut-shaped cake gaudily decorated in the colors of the Carnival (purple, green, and gold — apparently established by an early Mardi Gras king to represent justice, faith, and power, respectively). King Cakes range from simple coffee-cake-like affairs to giant concoctions filled with just about anything you can imagine shoving into a cake — including pecans, fruit, various flavors of cream cheese, and chocolate. But the secret ingredient in every King Cake is a tiny plastic or porcelain baby. The person who discovers it in his or her slice is branded as the purchaser of the next cake, and so it goes at offices, schools, and parties from Twelfth Night (12 days after Christmas) until the aptly named Fat Tuesday.
In order to avoid liability, most bakeries sell the cake with the baby on the side, leaving the actual hiding to the purchaser. Fear of choking on a plastic child doesn't stop people in the Big Easy from chowing down on more than 750,000 King Cakes a year, according to the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, and many Louisiana bakeries now ship their royal confections across the country, making it unlikely that the sun will soon set on this cake's kingdom.
There is much lore about the origins of today's King Cake ritual. One fanciful tale traces it to Western European, pre-Christian societies in which whoever found a coin or bean in a special cake was crowned King for the year; afterwards, he was sacrificed to ensure a good harvest — which makes having to pony up for the next cake seem like a mighty good deal. Whether they stole the idea from the pagans or not, Christians have long served cakes containing coins or gilded beans for the Feast of the Epiphany or Twelfth Night, a celebration of the visit of the three wise men — the Magi or Kings — to the infant Jesus 12 days after his birth. Current King Cake practices in New Orleans evolved from the late 1800s when Mardi Gras "krewes" (the fancy term for parade and party organizing societies) used these cakes to choose queens and kings to preside over weekly Twelfth Night balls — after a regal seven days, the winner would provide the cake for the next ball. With the bean now a baby and the ball a bacchanalian binge, it seems the cake has come full circle.
King Cake - Traditional New Orleans Recipe
(See cook’s notes at the end of recipe.)
Ingredients
1/2 cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees)
2 packages active dry yeast
1/2 cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar
3 1/2 - 4 1/2 cups flour unsifted
1 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 cup warm milk
5 egg yolks
1 stick butter cut into slices and softened, plus 2 tablespoons more softened butter
1 egg slightly beaten with 1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1" plastic baby doll (find at cake decorating store or I found them at Michael’s)
Directions
Pour the warm water into a small shallow bowl, and sprinkle yeast and 2 teaspoons sugar into it. Allow the yeast and sugar to rest for three minutes then mix thoroughly. Set bowl in a warm place for ten minutes, or until yeast bubbles up and mixture almost doubles in volume.
Combine 3 1/2 cups of flour, remaining sugar, nutmeg and salt, and sift into a large mixing bowl. Stir in lemon zest. Separate center of mixture to form a hole and pour in yeast mixture and milk. Add egg yolks and, using a wooden spoon, slowly combine dry ingredients into the yeast/milk mixture. When mixture is smooth, beat in 8 tablespoons butter (1 tablespoon at a time) and continue to beat 2 minutes, or until dough can be formed into a medium-soft ball.
Place ball of dough on a lightly floured surface and knead like bread. While kneading, sprinkle up to 1 cup more of flour (1 tablespoon at a time) over the dough. When dough is no longer sticky, knead 10 minutes more until shiny and elastic. (See note below)
Using a pastry brush, coat the inside of a large bowl evenly with one tablespoon softened butter. Place dough ball in the bowl and rotate until the entire surface is buttered. Cover bowl with a moderately thick kitchen towel and place in a draft-free spot for about 1 1/2 hours, or until the dough doubles in volume. (Can be made up to this point a day ahead – see note)
Using a pastry brush, coat a large baking sheet with one tablespoon of butter and set aside.
Remove dough from bowl and place on lightly floured surface. Using your fist punch dough down forcefully. Sprinkle cinnamon over the top, pat and shake dough into a cylinder. Twist dough to form a curled cylinder and loop cylinder onto the buttered baking sheet. Pinch the ends together to complete the circle. Cover dough with towel and set it in draft-free spot for 45 minutes, or until the circle of dough doubles in volume.
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
Brush top and sides of cake with egg wash and bake on middle rack of oven for 25 to 35 minutes until golden brown. Place cake on wire rack to cool. If desired, you can hide the plastic baby in the cake at this time buy pushing it through bottom crust.
Colored sugars
Green, purple, & yellow paste
12 tablespoons sugar
Buy colored sugars pre-made or: Squeeze a dot of green paste in palm of hand. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar over the paste and rub together quickly. Place this mixture on wax paper and wash hands to remove color. Repeat process for other 2 colors. Place aside.
Icing
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 - 6 tablespoons water
Combine sugar, lemon juice and 3 tablespoons water until smooth. If icing is too stiff, add more water until spreadable. Spread icing over top of cake. Immediately sprinkle the colored sugars in individual rows consisting of about 2 rows of green, purple and yellow.
Cake is served in 2" - 3" pieces.
Maria’s Notes:
I use my oven to get bread to rise, if doing this turn oven to lowest setting while you prep ingredients. Then turn it off when you put dough into rise.
I did NOT knead this by hand. You can use a Kitchen Aid/stand mixer with a bread hook or in my case I used my Food Processor with the dough blade.
If making a day ahead cover bowl with damp towel and then seal with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Then follow steps to form in circle, etc. and place back in warmed oven to rise (after an hour it hadn’t risen so I turned oven to lowest setting to speed up the process – check it about every 30 mins or so.)
TWELFTH NIGHT OR KING'S CAKE
This is a Creole cake whose history is the history of the famous New Orleans carnivals celebrated in song and stories. The "King's Cake," or Gateau de Roi, is inseparably connected with the origin of our now world-famed carnival balls. In fact, they owe their origin to the old Creole custom of choosing a king and queen on King's Day, or Twelfth Night.
Go into any office in Louisiana during Mardi Gras season and you're almost sure to see employees feeding on a donut-shaped cake gaudily decorated in the colors of the Carnival (purple, green, and gold — apparently established by an early Mardi Gras king to represent justice, faith, and power, respectively). King Cakes range from simple coffee-cake-like affairs to giant concoctions filled with just about anything you can imagine shoving into a cake — including pecans, fruit, various flavors of cream cheese, and chocolate. But the secret ingredient in every King Cake is a tiny plastic or porcelain baby. The person who discovers it in his or her slice is branded as the purchaser of the next cake, and so it goes at offices, schools, and parties from Twelfth Night (12 days after Christmas) until the aptly named Fat Tuesday.
In order to avoid liability, most bakeries sell the cake with the baby on the side, leaving the actual hiding to the purchaser. Fear of choking on a plastic child doesn't stop people in the Big Easy from chowing down on more than 750,000 King Cakes a year, according to the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, and many Louisiana bakeries now ship their royal confections across the country, making it unlikely that the sun will soon set on this cake's kingdom.
There is much lore about the origins of today's King Cake ritual. One fanciful tale traces it to Western European, pre-Christian societies in which whoever found a coin or bean in a special cake was crowned King for the year; afterwards, he was sacrificed to ensure a good harvest — which makes having to pony up for the next cake seem like a mighty good deal. Whether they stole the idea from the pagans or not, Christians have long served cakes containing coins or gilded beans for the Feast of the Epiphany or Twelfth Night, a celebration of the visit of the three wise men — the Magi or Kings — to the infant Jesus 12 days after his birth. Current King Cake practices in New Orleans evolved from the late 1800s when Mardi Gras "krewes" (the fancy term for parade and party organizing societies) used these cakes to choose queens and kings to preside over weekly Twelfth Night balls — after a regal seven days, the winner would provide the cake for the next ball. With the bean now a baby and the ball a bacchanalian binge, it seems the cake has come full circle.