January 2008 Archives

King Cakes!

By YatPundit on January 19, 2008 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The official start to the Carnival season in New Orleans is January 6th. To Catholics of various flavors, this is Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany. To kick off the season, celebrate what is ostensibly a Christian tradition in a very pagan way: The King's Cake.

King cakes have their origins in pagan traditions that believed the "sacred king" had to be sacrificed to the land in order to renew it and have a good harvest in the fall. Of course, the ruler of the tribe/clan wasn't usually interested in being sacrificed, and he didn't get where he was in life only to see his son(s) sacrificed, either. The solution was simple: make a "king for a day."

One of the methods of selecting the Sacred King was the King's Cake. There would be a festival with a big feast, and a nice cake for dessert. The women would bake a single bean into the cake. It would be sliced up and served to the young men of the clan. Whoever got the bean was then made king. He would be anointed and given rule over the festival. After exercising his rule, having some fun, etc., the "king" would then give his life to the land.

In a lot of regions, Christian priests played it smart. Instead of forcing the people to give up their customs, the priests did their best to integrate those customs into the practice of Christianity. So, the King Cake became a celebration of the Magi, the three wise men reputed to have visited the baby Jesus.

Or so the story goes. In New Orleans, it's not about the origins of the king cake, it's all about the next one.

The original New Orleans king cake was simple fare. The classic king cake was sold at many local bakeries, but it was McKenzie's Pastry Shoppes who made it a New Orleans institution. The cake was simple--roll out bread dough into a loaf about 3"wide, but then join the ends together so it becomes an oval. Instead of proofing the dough to make it have a crunchy crust, sweeten it and bake. When it's done, sprinkle it with granulated sugar that's colored purple, green, and gold.

With over 30 McKenzie's stores selling their cakes throughout the city, other bakeries created variations on the basic recipe to attract customers. The first popular variation was to put white sugar icing on top of the granulated sugar, like Haydel's bakery on Jefferson Hwy. does:

Haydel's cake is essentially the classic style, but with icing. Before the chain went out of business, McKenzie's made a king cake very similar to this.

There's another style of king cake that is wicked popular in New Orleans. It originated in Chalmette, at Randazzo's Bakery on Judge Perez Drive. The Randazzo's king cake is more like a classic coffee cake with icing on top:

While these two look like mere variations on a theme, they are really two different pastries. The cake is totally different, and while I like the Randazzo's cake, I like the granulated sugar on the Haydel's version better.

This particular Randazzo's king cake came from Manny Randazzo's in Metairie. As the second generation of Randazzos left Chalmette, they took the king cake recipe with them. Manny Randazzo is a cousin of the original family. The Chalmette branch sued him for opening up in the western suburb. That lawsuit and other issues created a rift in the original bakery, and some of the children left to form "Randazzo's Good Children Bakery," also in Chalmette. After the storm, another Randazzo's opened up, this time across the lake in Slidell: "Randazzo's Camellia Bakery" (the flower being a symbol of the city of Slidell). The lawsuits went back and forth, but at least one judge ruled that there was no patent or copyright on the king cake recipe, so Manny Randazzo could use his name and make a buck on the family business in Metairie.

There is one other variation to the King Cake that merits mention, the "filled" king cake. To get an advantage on the competition, some bakeries carried king cakes one step fancier by adding fillings to the center of the cake. You can buy king cakes filled with apple, lemon, blueberry, cream cheese, and other fillings. The filling is the sort of stuff you expect in a danish pastry. My favorite filled king cake was also from the late, lamented, McKenzie's, their cherry-and-cream cheese filled. Sinfully delicious.

Da Baby

By the time the king cake tradition got to New Orleans, the original bean in the cake had changed to a doll, representative of the baby Jesus. In a modern king cake, if you get the prize, it's a plastic baby. Since we no longer sacrifice the sacred king (although the notion is tempting sometimes), whoever gets the baby is supposed to bring the next king cake. Older folks still have memories of "king cake parties" when they were kids, where families in the neighborhood would get together to share king cake. These days, the sharing usually takes place at work--someone will start the season off on a Friday by bringing a king cake. If you get the baby, you bring another one next week. This was always a special treat if you worked with someone who lived near one of the "cool" bakeries like Randazzo's, as opposed to those of us who would bring a McKenzie's cake.

Originally, the baby was porcelain (plastic being a petrochemical creation of later generations). In the 1980s, Haydel's re-created one of their original babies and gave them away as a bonus with the cakes. They called it "Baby Charlotte:"

The baby actually baked into the cakes looks more like this:

The porcelain doll was so popular that Haydel's has released a new bonus figure every year. This year's figure is a waiter from either Cafe du Monde or Morning Call, a "Coffee and Beignets Waiter."