Happy Fat Tuesday guyyyyysssss!
This year marks the 200th birthday of Louisiana, and what better way to celebrate than with the greatest cake in Louisiana?
King Cake!
They truly make great birthday cakes, my friends had one special ordered for my 18th birthday.
Yikes. High school.
The best king cake in all of Louisiana is most definitely from Julie Anne's in Shreveport.
(Which was once featured in People magazine and Southern Living!)
Sorry, south Louisiana peeps, no Gambinos for me, I'm a little biased.
My favorite one they make is filled with pralines and cream cheese.
"Traditional" king cakes don't have any filling, and that's terribly boring.
The rule is whoever finds the little plastic baby Jesus has to buy the king cake next year.
Honestly, in all my years of king caking, no one has ever kept up with that.
It's just fun to find a little plastic child inside your cake?
Once king cake season arrived (back in January) Ellie was in the middle of doing the Daniel Fast with our church, and this conversation happened:
I was planning on making a homemade king cake this weekend and blogging a how-to, but due to a severe overdose on king cake this past month, I couldn't work up the courage (or insulin) to do it.
(My family has had 4 Julie Anne's king cakes total!)
Since today is Fat Tuesday, you better make it live up to its name!
Speaking of insulin, here is Paula Deen's recipe instead :
Too soon for diabetes jokes?
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| Pics and recipe via skiptomylou.org |
Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
2/3 cup evaporated milk
3/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 envelopes active dry yeast, regular or rapid rise
3 eggs
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
6 cups all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, melted
1 egg white, for glazing
Cinnamon-Sugar Filling:
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Icing:
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons whole milk
Yellow Sugar, Purple Sugar, Green Sugar
Melt the butter in the microwave in a medium mixing bowl.
Add the evaporated milk, 3/4 cup of the sugar, and the salt. Stir so that the sugar dissolves. Allow to cool.
Dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup lukewarm water and stir in the remaining teaspoon sugar. Allow to stand for 5 minutes, until foamy.
Add the yeast mixture to the butter and milk mixture. Add the eggs, nutmeg and lemon zest and whisk together vigorously, until well blended.
Whisk in the flour, 1 cup at a time, until you have a thick paste (about 3 cups flour)
Then switch to a wooden spoon and continue adding flour and mixing well.
Do not add more than 6 cups flour, or your cake will be too dense.
When you have added all the flour, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured wooden board and knead it with your hands, which you have dusted with flour, until the dough is smooth and elastic, about a dozen turns.
Place the dough into a large bowl cooking spray. Turn the dough to coat all sides with spray. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and allow the dough to rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.
Make the cinnamon-sugar filling:
Combine the sugar and cinnamon in a small dish and stir well.
Punch the dough down and divide the dough in two. Roll out each half into a 10 by 15 inch rectangle. Brush each rectangle with half of the melted butter and then sprinkle each rectangle with half of the cinnamon-sugar filling mixture. Roll up along the long end like a jelly roll. Press the roll together at the seam, sealing with water if necessary. Wind the two rolls together, forming one thick piece. On a baking sheet sprayed with vegetable oil cooking spray, form the dough into a circle and seal the ends together.
Cover with a tea towel and allow the cake to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour, until it almost doubles in size.
Don’t forget to hide your baby Jesus!
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Whisk the egg white with 1 tablespoon water. Brush the top of the cake with the egg white. Bake the cake for 35 minutes, until it is browned and sounds hollow when tapped.
Make the white icing:
Combine the sugar and milk in a small dish and whisk until smooth. If the mixture seems too thin, add a little more sugar. If it won’t drizzle, add a little more milk, 1/2 teaspoon at a time.
Allow the cake to cool for a few minutes on a wire rack.
Drizzle with icing and sprinkle the colored sugar in random patterns over the white icing.
Taaaa daaa!
Not too hard, huh?
If you wanna skip all the dough difficulties, you can always use crescent rolls for the dough stuffed with a cream cheese/pie filling combo.
(Just make the little crescent doughy triangles look like this, spread your filling around the ring, then wrap them over the top of the filling and bake away!)
Complements of mom, the former Pampered Chef.
If all that sounds too complicated then feel free to make these bad boys:
King cake knots!
I need them in my life.
Trish and I have big plans to get super fat for dinner tonight.
I'm just a regular 'ol Baptist, but she's one of those Catholic type folk so she's giving up lots of scary things for lent:
Cokes, sweets, and fried food.
Her willpower astounds me.
Is anyone else out there giving up something for lent?
Happy Fat Tuesday, from Sir Charles!
