A Peine For Your Thoughts

Did you know: King Cake is actually BREAD?

I didn’t.

Also: King Cake can be moist and delicious, contrary to what you’ve tasted in the supermarket, which is probably sitting silently in a box next to the angel food cake, growing more stale by the minute.

Did you know that? Because I didn’t.

So when my friend sent me an e-mail last week saying something to the effect of, “Hey T! I know you’re on this whole bread-baking kick, so would you want to make a King Cake for the Superbowl Party on Sunday?” I thought, King Cake is bread? And also, I don’t even like King Cake.

But, the thing about my baking habit is: I don’t care if I don’t like it. Sometimes, blessedly, I get so wrapped up in the baking process that I’m not even HUNGRY when it’s all over and Drew is digging in.

Ok. I think that happened once. And I was getting sick.

Anyway. King Cake! A surprisingly easy, and as it turns out, ridiculously delicious, cinnamon-spiced bread coated in a fondant glaze, covered in purple, yellow and green sprinkles. And most importantly: stuffed with a tiny baby. Or three!

Whoever finds a baby in their piece of King Cake is blessed with good luck for the next year. And has to buy the next King Cake. I thought I’d spread the wealth to three people, a thought that backfired in a major way when one guy got two babies and the third almost resulted in costly dental work when my very own beloved husband shoved an entire piece of cake in his mouth, despite watching me shove three babies into the cake with his very own eyes.

The process is relatively simple. Yeast is combined with sugar, a little flour, and some lukewarm milk. It is left alone until it is activated, then it is combined with the rest of the flour, some cinnamon, some lemon zest, some nutmeg, and a few other ingredients, and mixed by hand, if you’re man enough. Or by KitchenAid mixer, if you’re a pansy.

After about 12 minutes of kneading with the bread hook (that’s what I call my bicep…or my mixer), the dough is left to rise for about 90 minutes. Cover it with a piece of saran wrap when it looks like this:

Come back 90 minutes later, and it looks like this!

Magically, it’s turned an unappealing shade of yellow because the photographer has not yet learned how to take photographs in her cave of a house.

At this point, dump it out onto the counter and punch some of the air out of it. The recipe I used instructed me to divide it into three equal pieces and braid it, but that sounded more like challah to me. Every King Cake I’ve ever seen was twisted, more like rope. So I decided my way was probably better. After all, I’ve made so many King Cakes. And I’m from Oklahoma, where King Cake is eaten every year when we celebrate the Land Rush. So I definitely know best.

Twist the two ropes together and coil into a circle on a parchment paper-covered cookie sheet.

While your oven preheats to 375 degrees, cover the dough with a damp towel and let it rise again for 30 minutes. Then, bake for 30 minutes or until the outside is golden and beautiful, and your house smells like your grandma’s house did when she was baking all day to celebrate the Land Rush.

King Cake in the supermarket does NOT look like this. Which is a good thing, in my book.

While the cake cools, whip up the super-simple fondant glaze. It’s going to be super simple for you, because I’ve already forged ahead and made this:

A cement mixer was necessary for this frosting, and unfortunately, mine was in the shop. What did I do wrong? I have no idea. I had no time to figure it out because, as always, I was running late. So I ran to the recipe for the glaze I used on my cinnamon rolls, and it worked like a charm.

When the King Cake is cool, insert your baby, or babies. Something else I did not know: do not bake the cake with the babies already in it. Maybe this is common knowledge to all of you. But, it wasn’t to me. Maybe in Oklahoma we used cast iron babies.

When the cake is cooled, all that’s left to do is transport it to your extra-largest platter, cover it in frosting, and douse it in Mardi Gras-colored sprinkles.

King Cake: Not a cake at all. Fun to make. Deceptively delicious. Potentially hazardous to your dental health. Make one this Mardi Gras and let me know how it turns out! Just be careful where you bite down…

Here’s a link to the fantastic recipe I used. And, since I had no luck at all with the icing this recipe recommends, below are the instructions for the icing I was finally able to coax into submission.

White Fondant Glaze (Adapted from Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”)

Ingredients:

4 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp. lemon, orange or vanilla extract (I used lemon here to complement the lemon zest in the cake)

6 Tbsp. – 1/2 cup warm milk

Directions:

- Sift powdered sugar into a bowl.

- Add extract, then add milk slowly while briskly whisking until all the sugar is dissolved. Add only as much milk as is needed to make a thick, smooth paste.