King cake! Get yer king cake here!
Jan. 17th, 2003 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenVacuum is as broken as a broken thing. I'll have to take it into the shop. Bleh.
On the brighter side, I got a few rooms cleaned, finally put away the Xmas decorations (what? What??) and started in on the Mardi Gras stuff. I'll have to go into my storage space (read: that so ain't happening today) to get my good beads, but I decorated a wreath with a few that I had lying around the house.
Got a roast in the slow cooker going for French Dip later tonight. It already smells great so color me a happy camper.
I'm also in the middle of making king cake.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wesleysgirl asked for the recipe but on the odd chance anyone else is interested I'll share it here.
Now for those who don't know, a king cake isn't really what most people would probably call a cake. It doesn't look, taste or feel like the pictures of cakes that you see on a Duncan Hines box. Instead it's more like if a coffee roll and a loaf of bread had a baby. But it's still quite tasty.
There are lots of recipes on the net for king cake. One of the most popular is Emeril's. Personally I think that recipe tastses like ass so I use this one instead. But really there's no such thing as the "right" king cake. It's like saying what's the recipe for the right tomato sauce. Yeah all tomato sauces have something in common, but beyond that they're all different.
To give you the history, king cake is eaten during Mardi Gras season and the tradition behind it is that typically there's a party a week and the cake is served at it. Inside of the cake is a toy baby. Whoever gets the slice with the baby in it is "king", which these days tends to translate to "the person throwing next week's party". Offices in New Orleans will also have king cakes every Friday, with the person getting the baby being responsible for bringing in a cake the next week. This tends to give rise to a lot of orphan babies being left on the cake tray when nobody's looking, or people slicing the final piece of cake into pieces the width of a micron just to make sure they don't get stuck with the kid.
I found this recipe on the web. Unfortunately I didn't copy down the URL or even the name of the person who posted it, so all I can do is publically apologize to him/her and make it clear that I get no credit for this. OTOH it was posted on a public website so I'm not giving away the secret recipe for KFC's 11 herbs and spices either.
The recipe itself was actually not written very well. The ingredients originally listed, for example, only one fourth of a cup of water which in no way in Hell would be enough for the amount of flour that you need. I put down the approx adjustments that I made but bear in mind this is approximate. My method has been to start with the amounts I give here then tweak the water and flour as needed until I get the right consistancy.
That being said, here we go. I guess on the Food Network scale I'd rate this recipe at about a medium difficulty, but only because there's rolling and kneading involved and I know that can make some people have to hide under their beds while breathing into paper bags.
Also note that king cakes can be filled with whatever you like. Cream cheese, pie filling and preserves are common variations. I personally don't like that kind of cake so this version is for a cinnamon sugar filling. Feel free to use whatever you like.
Ingredients for cake:
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 t. salt
1/2 cup sugar (not a typo, you need the separate amounts)
1 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
3 T butter or margarine
1 cup warm water
1 pkg active dry yeast
1 egg
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 Toy babies or dried beans or nuts (such as almonds)
Combine yeast and water in large bowl (or mixing bowl, if using the dough hook on your mixer). Add flour, egg and water. If mixing by hand, stir until dough is smooth and leaves the side of the bowl, then turn out onto a floured surface and knead until dough becomes satiny and blisters appear on the surface. If using a mixer, combine the ingredients and then mix using a dough hook with the mixer on its lowest setting until the dough becomes satiny and blisters appear on the surface.
Place into a well greased bowl, turning dough to grease all sides. Cover and let rise for one hour.
When the hour draws to a close, preheat oven to 375.
In a small saucepan, heat milk until steaming. Then add the butter, salt and quater cup of sugar and stir until the butter is melted.
Combine 1/2 cup of sugar and the cinnamon in a bowl and set aside.
Take the risen dough and pinch it down to divide it in half. Take one portion of dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll to a 28"x10" rectangle (give or take). During this stage feel free to knead more flour into the dough if you find it's too gooey or sticky to work with (in other words you don't have to panic if you don't get the flour/water proportions right when mixing them earlier).
Spread half each of butter and cinnamon mixture on dough. Roll dough, jelly roll style, starting at the long side. Gently place dough roll, seam side down, on lightly greased baking sheet (you may wish to cover the sheet with tinfoil to help with cleaning in case any of the filling leaks out of the cake). Bring ends of dough together and form an oval ring. Insert baby/bean/nut into the seam before you seal it. Moisten and pinch the edges together to seal.
Repeat the above with the remaining dough, then cover and let both cakes rise in a warm place, free from drafts, for about 20 min or until doubled in bulk.
Bake for 15 to 20 min or until golden. Place on rack to cool.
Decorating
King cakes are typically decorated with, bare minimum, frosting in the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold and, more typically, both frosting and colored sugar.
You can make your own frosting if you like though I'll admit I usually cheat and buy some at the store. If buying, you need one can of white frosting in whatever flavor you like. If making, here's the recipe that was included with the king cake recipe above. Fair warning, I've never tried it so I can't vouch for how good or accurate it is:
3 cups sifted powdered sugar
3 T. butter or margarine, melted
3 to 5 T of milk
1/4 t vanilla extract
1 to 2 drops each green, yellow, red and blue food coloring.
Combine powdered sugar and melted butter. Add milk (room temperature) to reach desired consistancy for drizzling; stir in vanilla. Divide frosting into 3 batches, tinting one with green, one with yellow and combining blue and red for purple. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.
TBQ's notes: regular frosting consistancy is fine. Don't worry overmuch about the "drizzling" thing there. Just spread whatever frosting you're using onto top of the cakes just as you would for regular cakes. So long as you make sure that you alternate purple, green and gold, you're fine. Also I find that a drop or two of red into the yellow gives it a much more "gold" like color than flat-out yellow does. And remember, Mardi Gras is not about subtle. Don't skimp on the food coloring! Pastel is not what we're going for here! ;)
Finally, for the colored sugars, you can either buy them (assuming you can find purple and gold amongst all that green and red leftover from Christmas) or make them. Use 1/2 cup sugar for each color. Put each 1/2 cup into a separate sandwich bag, toss in a few drops of the appropriate food coloring, just as you did for the frosting, seal the bag, shake it up, and there you go. Note: don't bother using gel food coloring for this. It won't work. You need the liquid. And if you feel sugar on top of frosting is too much, feel free to skip this part.
And that's about it. It's bright, garish, kind of tacky, insanely sweet and actually better eating than you'd give it credit for. Good luck!
On the brighter side, I got a few rooms cleaned, finally put away the Xmas decorations (what? What??) and started in on the Mardi Gras stuff. I'll have to go into my storage space (read: that so ain't happening today) to get my good beads, but I decorated a wreath with a few that I had lying around the house.
Got a roast in the slow cooker going for French Dip later tonight. It already smells great so color me a happy camper.
I'm also in the middle of making king cake.
wesleysgirl asked for the recipe but on the odd chance anyone else is interested I'll share it here.Now for those who don't know, a king cake isn't really what most people would probably call a cake. It doesn't look, taste or feel like the pictures of cakes that you see on a Duncan Hines box. Instead it's more like if a coffee roll and a loaf of bread had a baby. But it's still quite tasty.
There are lots of recipes on the net for king cake. One of the most popular is Emeril's. Personally I think that recipe tastses like ass so I use this one instead. But really there's no such thing as the "right" king cake. It's like saying what's the recipe for the right tomato sauce. Yeah all tomato sauces have something in common, but beyond that they're all different.
To give you the history, king cake is eaten during Mardi Gras season and the tradition behind it is that typically there's a party a week and the cake is served at it. Inside of the cake is a toy baby. Whoever gets the slice with the baby in it is "king", which these days tends to translate to "the person throwing next week's party". Offices in New Orleans will also have king cakes every Friday, with the person getting the baby being responsible for bringing in a cake the next week. This tends to give rise to a lot of orphan babies being left on the cake tray when nobody's looking, or people slicing the final piece of cake into pieces the width of a micron just to make sure they don't get stuck with the kid.
I found this recipe on the web. Unfortunately I didn't copy down the URL or even the name of the person who posted it, so all I can do is publically apologize to him/her and make it clear that I get no credit for this. OTOH it was posted on a public website so I'm not giving away the secret recipe for KFC's 11 herbs and spices either.
The recipe itself was actually not written very well. The ingredients originally listed, for example, only one fourth of a cup of water which in no way in Hell would be enough for the amount of flour that you need. I put down the approx adjustments that I made but bear in mind this is approximate. My method has been to start with the amounts I give here then tweak the water and flour as needed until I get the right consistancy.
That being said, here we go. I guess on the Food Network scale I'd rate this recipe at about a medium difficulty, but only because there's rolling and kneading involved and I know that can make some people have to hide under their beds while breathing into paper bags.
Also note that king cakes can be filled with whatever you like. Cream cheese, pie filling and preserves are common variations. I personally don't like that kind of cake so this version is for a cinnamon sugar filling. Feel free to use whatever you like.
Ingredients for cake:
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 t. salt
1/2 cup sugar (not a typo, you need the separate amounts)
1 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
3 T butter or margarine
1 cup warm water
1 pkg active dry yeast
1 egg
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 Toy babies or dried beans or nuts (such as almonds)
Combine yeast and water in large bowl (or mixing bowl, if using the dough hook on your mixer). Add flour, egg and water. If mixing by hand, stir until dough is smooth and leaves the side of the bowl, then turn out onto a floured surface and knead until dough becomes satiny and blisters appear on the surface. If using a mixer, combine the ingredients and then mix using a dough hook with the mixer on its lowest setting until the dough becomes satiny and blisters appear on the surface.
Place into a well greased bowl, turning dough to grease all sides. Cover and let rise for one hour.
When the hour draws to a close, preheat oven to 375.
In a small saucepan, heat milk until steaming. Then add the butter, salt and quater cup of sugar and stir until the butter is melted.
Combine 1/2 cup of sugar and the cinnamon in a bowl and set aside.
Take the risen dough and pinch it down to divide it in half. Take one portion of dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll to a 28"x10" rectangle (give or take). During this stage feel free to knead more flour into the dough if you find it's too gooey or sticky to work with (in other words you don't have to panic if you don't get the flour/water proportions right when mixing them earlier).
Spread half each of butter and cinnamon mixture on dough. Roll dough, jelly roll style, starting at the long side. Gently place dough roll, seam side down, on lightly greased baking sheet (you may wish to cover the sheet with tinfoil to help with cleaning in case any of the filling leaks out of the cake). Bring ends of dough together and form an oval ring. Insert baby/bean/nut into the seam before you seal it. Moisten and pinch the edges together to seal.
Repeat the above with the remaining dough, then cover and let both cakes rise in a warm place, free from drafts, for about 20 min or until doubled in bulk.
Bake for 15 to 20 min or until golden. Place on rack to cool.
Decorating
King cakes are typically decorated with, bare minimum, frosting in the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold and, more typically, both frosting and colored sugar.
You can make your own frosting if you like though I'll admit I usually cheat and buy some at the store. If buying, you need one can of white frosting in whatever flavor you like. If making, here's the recipe that was included with the king cake recipe above. Fair warning, I've never tried it so I can't vouch for how good or accurate it is:
3 cups sifted powdered sugar
3 T. butter or margarine, melted
3 to 5 T of milk
1/4 t vanilla extract
1 to 2 drops each green, yellow, red and blue food coloring.
Combine powdered sugar and melted butter. Add milk (room temperature) to reach desired consistancy for drizzling; stir in vanilla. Divide frosting into 3 batches, tinting one with green, one with yellow and combining blue and red for purple. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.
TBQ's notes: regular frosting consistancy is fine. Don't worry overmuch about the "drizzling" thing there. Just spread whatever frosting you're using onto top of the cakes just as you would for regular cakes. So long as you make sure that you alternate purple, green and gold, you're fine. Also I find that a drop or two of red into the yellow gives it a much more "gold" like color than flat-out yellow does. And remember, Mardi Gras is not about subtle. Don't skimp on the food coloring! Pastel is not what we're going for here! ;)
Finally, for the colored sugars, you can either buy them (assuming you can find purple and gold amongst all that green and red leftover from Christmas) or make them. Use 1/2 cup sugar for each color. Put each 1/2 cup into a separate sandwich bag, toss in a few drops of the appropriate food coloring, just as you did for the frosting, seal the bag, shake it up, and there you go. Note: don't bother using gel food coloring for this. It won't work. You need the liquid. And if you feel sugar on top of frosting is too much, feel free to skip this part.
And that's about it. It's bright, garish, kind of tacky, insanely sweet and actually better eating than you'd give it credit for. Good luck!
