King Cake for Kings’ Day

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You can take the girl out of Louisiana, but you can’t take the Louisiana out of the girl. Up here in Tennessee there are not many Catholics. Therefore, there are not many catholic traditions. Mardi Gras being one of those traditions that is just not celebrated around these parts. Have no fear, I’ll bring the party here. Today we make a King Cake.

The Feast of the Epiphany celebrates the arrival of the Three Kings to Bethlehem to see and worship Jesus. Also known as Kings’ Day, it is a day when all the bakeries in the land (at least one Louisiana) make the mouthwatering treat affectionately known as King Cake. I am told the amazing bakery here also sells them, but I have not checked yet. Instead I decided we could make our own sweet treat since in the spirit of being self-sufficient. Plus, they are incredibly expensive to ship.

I figured it couldn’t be hard. I thought it was basically just eggy bread with cinnamon. I decided to look and found the recipe for a great bakery in New Orleans called Haydel’s. My sister-in-law and my best friend and roomie in college both have birthdays today and years ago I was invited to my best friend’s family birthday dinner and her birthday cake was a king cake from Haydel’s. It was so good and I was super excited to see this recipe.

I was surprised to learn it had other flavors besides  cinnamon and vanilla and now that I know they are in there I can taste all the layers and realize it is the combination that makes the king cake taste so good.

It was super easy and super fun. I stuffed a bean inside because I didn’t have a baby. Instead of buying the next cake like we do back home I’m going to let whoever gets the baby pick the next flavor. This one was plain cinnamon.

Enjoy!