Cake Hour Cackle: MARDI GRAS!! KING CAKE!!! FIND THE BABY, FIND THE BABY!

MARDI GRAS!!

King Cakes!

Coffee Cake Style

Cheese Danish stule

Thanks to a former cackler from New Orleans we have become fans of king cakes and are happy to have them when Mardi Gras - Fat Tuesday - comes around. This time we relied upon kingkingcakes.com to ship us the traditional round cake from the Big Easy. We actually had two - a standard coffee cake and then one that was filled with cream cheese. Included with the cakes was some information on the origins or Mardi Gras in the US and some doubloons and beads. It felt just like New Orleans!! (Not!)

Look what we did

Yes, you have to decorate them yourselves!

Bead to share...

Beads to wear for the Zebra lady!

We didn't realize that we would have to rely upon our own artistic sensibilities to finish off the cakes which came without the icing or the very, VERY, colorful sugar sprinkled on top. Since sugar is a white granulate powder, who knows what they use to get the rather vibrant colors. Hopefully not uranium like they used to get certain colors in Fiestaware! But we called upon our inner artiste and the cakes got done.

Let's find those kids!

A pediatrician was standing by!

\Once the cakes were fully decorated and ready to go we got down to work of trying to find the two babies that were baked into the dough. Tradition has it that whoever finds the baby has to buy the cake for the next party. We'll see if that flies. Nonetheless we took this seriously and even had a pediatrician on hand in the event of a baby emergency.

No baby yet!

Not in the cheese one either

Find the baby!

I'm French so maybe I'll find it!

We were beginning to doubt that they had, in fact, baked the baby into the pastry as we had polished off a good chunk of the first ring trying to find one. Folks kept cutting and cutting and finally there it was nestled in a little hollow of the cake. The first one found was in the basic cinnamon coffee cake version and it proved easy to extract. Once freed the baby enjoyed the cake hour company and spent a little time playing in the radioactively colored sugar.

FIND THE BABY, FIND THE BABY!

It appears in a king cake cave!

The prowd mother!

Cinammon baby chills a bit...

...and then naps in the sugar!

The second baby proved to be a bit more challenging given that the second cake was filled with cream cheese. Once again we had cut up most of the cake and still not found the little guy. At this point most of us had our fill of king cake and had to call in some reinforcements to try a piece and see if they could come up with the kid. Finally after some final pushes the second baby was born with and afterbirth of cream cheese. Baby number one was happy to have a companion and they spent some time playing around, taking a bath together and even trying out a luge run on the remaining piece of king cake.

Now push.....push.....PUSH!

I'm not going to eat the baby...

The baby is born covered in cream cheese afterbirth!

The proud father

Once the babies were found a sense of satisfaction set in about having fully participated in the Mardi Gras experience despite not being anywhere near Louisiana. That may be a stretch but in the end there were smiles and king cake to spare!