Laissez les bon temps roulez encore! It's Mardi Gras!

Hot on the heels of Chinese New Year we have Mardi Gras!! Thanks to a former colleague from New Orleans we began our cake hour celebrations of Fat Tuesday all the way back in 2008.  Her tradition lives on and we get a king cake to honor the event and toss around some doubloons and beads in the traditional colors to share the meaning and fun of Mardi Gras.

Special box from FedeX!

Look what's inside!

Must be a King Cake - all decorated after arrival!

Just a bit shy on the purple!

Our designated Orpheus is ready to go

We had many this year who were unfamiliar with what it was all about so we also gave a short primer on Christian tradition, Lent leading into Easter and the concept of self denial.  Someone suggested giving up cake for Lent. Right! Like that's going to happen.





We relied upon our trusty New Orleans king cake bakery, named Kingkingcakes.com to get the thing to us and as you can tell from the box there is not doubting what it inside.  This year we just got the basic king cake with no fillings or fruit. These things actually come a little unassembled.  You have to add the icing and the three colors of sugar to get the finished product. That's not a big issue but for some reason the purple colored sugar is always the one that opens up in transit. So you will pardon if the cake is a little shy on the purple color. 

Showing off their doubloons and beads!

A few more partygoers!

Our French colleague celebrates a French American tradition!

This year the box had a greeting from the packers, the history of Mardi Gras and king cakes which was helpful with the neophytes, and a disclaimer about how the cake might be damaged.

Greetings from the packers!

Damage disclaimer but we were good!

Other than the purple sugar issues our cake was intact we quickly decorated it and began the search for the baby.  It was found by someone new this year which was nice. He didn't have much idea what he was doing but now knows. As tradition goes, he gets to host the next party.

The search for the baby begins!

And we have the host for the next party!

What's that crawling out of my cake!

It's the Mardi Gras baby saying let the good times roll!

The cake was very good, as usual, very moist and not overly sweet. Some were surprised that it came all the way from New Orleans.  You do what you gotta do to make sure Mardi Gras gets its due at cake hour.  Let the good times roll!