And it's Mardi Gras again!

Time for another cake hour Mardi Gras celebration. We got another king cake from New Orleans and celebrated another year of this traditional cake.  We also had the obligatory hunt for the baby in the cake.  When we placed the online order, despite the varied menu, very few came up available. The choice was pretty much chocolate king cake or apple.  At first we didn't understand as we usually were able to order the preferred cream cheese or praline cake.  We finally concluded that we waited too long and all the other types were sold out four days before fat Tuesday which was when we ordered it.

This year's Mardi Gras Treat -  a chocolate King Cake.

Orpheus starts to serve!

Got my beads and a doubloon!

Beads but no topless ladies!

This chocolate version of the famous pastry was not bad.  The cake itself is a basic coffee cake with some embellishments if desired - as mentioned apples, pralines etc.  There was a good amount of chocolate filling in this cake and although it looked so, it was not overly sweet. We all enjoyed it but some people expressed their preference for the usual cream cheese version so I guess we will have to order more promptly next year.

Lots of chocolate filling!

After about three fifths of the cake we found the baby sticking its butt into the air.  It was embedded in the chocolate filling so it required a little cleaning.

The baby is mooning us!

Typical birth - the baby is covered in gunk!

Guess who found the baby!

We had several newcomers to the Mardi Gras experience and we were hoping one of them would find the baby but it didn't happen. It took a little explaining the whole Easter, Lent self denial business for some to grasp what was going on. We also explained the business with the beads and doubloons. Some of them actually come with the cake for us to toss around. It is interesting that two people in the group, not the newbies, associated the fun in New Orleans with topless women.  Where did they get that idea?

Mardi Gras??

Can't wait to tell the folks back home!

We hope they understood. If not, they probably think we are a little odd to be eating cakes with small plastic toys baked in them.