Cake Hour Cackle: Mardi Gras! The babies are found!

Here we are again for another Mardi Gras! Thanks to a former colleague from New Orleans we have made it a tradition to celebrate Fat Tuesday with authentic King Cakes from kingkingcakes.com. Yes you can order these and arrange to have them arrive on Mardi Gras and so once again we did. Although these cakes are prepared the final decoration takes place after it is received. You get to add the sugar frosting and the colored sugar granules in the traditional colors to get the finished product. For the second year in a row the tops have popped off the containers of the colored sugar granules. This is annoying because the moisture from the cake causes the granules to melt. When melted yellow, green and purple fuse together you get...brown. Needless to say you end up with a look different than what is desired. Fortunately we had extra colors in the second cake so we were able to finish it off somewhat. Clearly the company needs to get his feedback.

A delivery from Fedex!

It's our two king cakes for Mardi Gras!

Unfortunately the colored granulated sugars popped open!

This on made it through intact!

Finished product number one - the praline cake!

Finished product number two - the traditional!

We gave the party some ambience by playing a CD of New Orleans Mardi Gras music that had been prepared by our Louisiana colleague now moved on. It had gone missing but turned up again when an office was cleaned. Images of Bourbon street popped in our heads. (Right!)


Our two offerings for Mardi Gras!

Our Orpheus with some Mardi Gras bling!

Offering up that king cake!

We got the same two cakes as last year since they seemed to go over well. One is the traditional king cake which is a little like a huge cinnamon Danish pastry. The second was a praline king cake which had real pralines. New Orleans pralines are clearly different then chocolate pralines. They are like gobs of dough that are baked into the pie. They are described as "a New Orleans institution! Sweet, slightly crumbly brown sugar candies are loaded with toasted pecans. It's important that the pecans be well-toasted so that they impart maximum flavor and crunch to the candy." Imagine a bunch of these baked into a Danish pastry and that is kind of what you had. Being in the cake removed whatever crunch they are supposed to have for sure!

That brown thing in the middle is the praline not the baby!

Nevertheless everyone joined in and devoured the cakes. There is a small plastic baby baked into the cake and the person who finds the baby is supposed to host the next party. That is not going to happen but we enjoy seeing who gets to find the distinct choking hazard in their piece. For the second year in a row one of our colleagues came up a winner. The second baby was found by one of our newer colleagues. Actually when cutting the first piece the baby was almost cut in half. Rather than acknowledge it was found the piece with the baby was given to the "winner" so that someone could claim the prize.

The baby search begins!

Biting into something!

And he does it again!

Baby number 1 is born!

Found something in my cake!

It's baby number 2!

The proud "parents"!

With beads, doubloons and our own Orpheus our own little "crewe" celebrated another Mardi Gras with gratitude to our New Orleans friend who got the whole thing started.