So it was much harder than I thought to find a good king cake recipe. That’s probably because it is much easier AND prettier to buy it at the store. Also, apparently king cake is just a southern thing?! I found this out as many people gave me a puzzled look when I told them of this galette des rois. This recipe is originally from saveur.com but I found it on the Huffington Post Taste page. Instead of using buttermilk for the glaze, I just ended up using regular 2% milk and powdered sugar. I find it dumb to buy whatever “sanding sugars” are just for this one cake, so we just put yellow sprinkles and mardi gras beads in the center to decorate!!

If you are familiar with the king cake tradition, most people hide this little plastic baby in one piece of the cake. And then (literally I’m googling “baby in king cake tradition” to figure out why we do this)…the person who receives the baby gets “special treats or obligations”??? Much to the surprise of my roommates, we didn’t have a miniature baby figurine. As I tried to suggest that we stick a dried edamame bean in as a replacement, everyone looked at me like I was crazy. Right, because a dried edamame bean is creepier than a baby in a cake??

Anywho, here are some pics from the adventure! We had a delightful Mardi Gras dinner including mac ‘n’ cheese, kale salad, Jo-Jos, carrot cake, KING CAKE, fruit salad, chicken fried rice and lots of other snackies.

This was my last night of sweets…giving them up for Lent!!

Start with some wet and dry separately

Cinnamon roll-y yeast dough made the night before. I highly suggest a mixer if you have one (I DONT)

Filling of pecans, lemon zest, cream cheese, cinnamon and SUGAH

SO FUN: after mixing fillling, you roll out the dough, cut a hole in the middle and spread around

Starting from the outside, roll the dough over and over again, pushing the filling to stay in, until it forms a ring

Bake at 350 for 25-30 mins, YUM

Powdered sugar/milk glaze on top with sprinkles and beads!