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02/29/2000 Archived Entry: "King Cake for Mardi Gras"

It’s not too late to order a King Cake, the traditional sweet of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, a sort of Danish pastry ring laced with cinnamon filling and decorated with sugar icing in the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green, and gold.

The cakes are first baked on January 6, the twelfth night of Christmas and the feast day of the three Magi, the kings who followed a star to find the new-born Christ child. The custom of the cake started in sixteenth century France. A century later, during the reign of Louis XIV, the custom of hiding a ceramic animal or human figure in the cake was begun. The person who got the piece of cake with the figure was to pick a consort and be responsible for the next year’s twelfth night party. The figure, now a baby and made of plastic, is still found in New Orleans’ King Cakes, so be careful as you eat it.

For the last number of years, I’ve been getting Kings Cakes from Rao’s bakery in Beaumont, Texas, a town with a large Cajun population that’s right over the Louisiana border. The cake is shipped UPS overnight and arrives as fresh as if it just came out of the oven. Jake Tortorice owns the bakery now and he’ll ship cakes for Mardi Gras parties until the last minute – Monday, March 6. However, if you want an off-season cake, he bakes them until July.

A traditional King Cake, which is to say with the cinnamon filling, is $27.95, including the overnight shipping, and will feed at least 15 people. Cakes with strawberry, blueberry or cream cheese filling are also available and cost $30.95.

To order, call 800-831-3098, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, or until 2 p.m. on Saturday. The line is closed on Sunday. You might also want to take a look at Rao’s web-site. Go to www.raosbakery.com. It has more history of King Cake and Mardi Gras, plus all the ordering information.