For most Americans, the advent of a new year is a time to make resolutions and to trim waistlines expanded by Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities. In party-loving New Orleans, however, the first week of January begins King cake season, a traditional gastronomic prelude to the city's Mardi Gras celebrations. Between January 6 (Three Kings' Day) and Mardi Gras, New Orleans bakers produce thousands of King cakes, resplendently decorated in the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green, and gold. Hidden in each oblong of braided coffee-cake dough is a bean or plastic baby; custom dictates that whoever finds it must give the next King cake party. And one Mardi Gras organization even uses the King cake tradition to choose the queen of its annual ball.
Hundreds of King cake parties are held in New Orleans every year. After the cake is served, the cry "I've got the baby" announces that a party-goer has received the slice of cake containing the baby or bean. That guest is crowned king or queen of the party, an honor that includes playing host at the following week's King cake festivity, where a successor is chosen in the same manner. King cake enthusiasm also extends to offices, where the cakes are served at coffee breaks, and to parties for children whose birthdays fall during this time (youngsters often find that a thoughtful mother has arranged for a baby to appear in every guest's serving of King cake).
On January 6, New Orleans bakeries, filled with the sweet, spicy bouquet of King Cakes, are besieged by throngs of devotees eager to sample the first King cake of the year. To satisfy the thousands of locals and out-of-towners who relish the gaily decorated treats, New Orleans patisseries bake around the clock from January 1 until Mardi Gras, the end date of the King cake season. "Mardi Gras means fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday," explains David Haydel, co-owner with his brother, Gary, of a forty-year-old New Orleans bakery founded by their father.
New Orleans bakers estimate that they will take more than a quarter of a million King cakes from their ovens before the season ends. "The traditional cinnamon-flavored cakes are the most requested," says Sam Scelfo, president of Gambino's bakery, "but over the last 10 years, bakeries have broadened the King cake selection by adding an assortment of fillings and flavorings to their recipes. Apple, cheese, and praline King cakes are just a few of the many varieties now available. The cakes used to be a strictly local specialty, but they are now becoming much more widely known."
The colorful cakes are so popular that local bakeries ship thousands of King cakes all over the United States, and often ship to Europe and Japan. Companies have perfected shipping methods that guarantee delivery in a day or two.
The New Orleans tradition of celebrating the feast of the three Magi with a special cake is rooted in several European cultures. As far back as the first half of the sixteenth century, France commemorated Kings' Day, which falls on the twelfth day after Christmas, with a Twelfth Night cake. In the seventeenth century, Louis XIV took part in at least one Twelfth Night festival where a bean or ceramic figure was hidden in the cake, also known as a gâteau des Rois (Kings' cake).
The Twelfth Night cake custom is still widely observed in France, where families and friends gather around one of three different cakes served at King cake soirées. In some regions the couronne, made from brioche dough topped with a fruit-festooned sugar glaze, is favored. In Paris and other major cities, the galette, a dry puff-pastry round, and the gâteau, a fancier galette filled with frangipane (almond-cream paste), prevail.
"In most areas of France, a tiny plastic king or queen is baked into the galette des Rois, but in some rural towns you can still find the little ceramic toys and animals that have been inserted in the cakes for hundreds of years," says Jean-Luc Albin, a French pastry chef who bakes the French-style King cakes at his suburban New Orleans shop, Maurice French Pastries. "When we have a King cake party in France, we refer to the galette des Rois tradition as 'pulling the king or queen,' " he continues. "The guest who receives a serving with the trinket hidden inside picks a consort. Then the pair, who will host the next Kings' Day party, are crowned with the gold and silver paper diadems that adorn the cake. In France, Kings' Day celebrations end on January 31."
France's brioche-like couronne became the forerunner of New Orleans's King cake when colonials of French and Spanish descent who settled New Orleans adopted the French Twelfth Night cake custom and blended it with the Spanish tradition of mounting a grand ball on Twelfth Night. By the end of the eighteenth century, party-loving colonists had extended the tradition into an entire season of balls called les bals des Rois (the balls of Kings), which started on Twelfth Night and ended on Mardi Gras. The king and queen chosen the first night by finding the bean in the cake were responsible for holding the next ball, when the luck of the bean would decide their successors.
In the years before the Civil War, fabulously wealthy plantation owners sometimes substituted gold, diamonds, or other valuables for the bean. Coins, peas, pecans, and beans were used in the cakes until 1952, when Donald and Gerald Entringer, owners of McKenzie's, a more than seventy-year-old New Orleans bakery, started putting china dolls in their King cakes. In later years, the dolls were replaced by plastic babies.
The colors of purple, green, and gold first appeared on the cakes after 1872, when the Rex krewe (organization) selected those colors for its opening Mardi Gras parade. The colors came to stand for Mardi Gras and took on symbolic meanings: purple for justice, green for faith, gold for power.
Although the lavish bals des Rois came to an end, the custom of using galettes des Rois to choose kings and queens at parties continued. In 1871, the practice was permanently linked with the New Orleans Mardi Gras when the Twelfth Night Revelers, New Orleans's second-oldest Mardi Gras krewe, used a Twelfth Night cake to choose their queen.
The tradition continues today. At the start of their annual pageant, the Twelfth Night Revelers dance onto the ballroom floor to the strains of "If I Knew You Were Coming I'd Have Baked a Cake." Decked out in pastry chef's attire, the krewe's "junior cooks" (usually sons and nephews of krewe members) toss miniature King cakes in berribboned bags to the delighted audience while a huge fire-tier replica of a King cake is wheeled into the room. Single women at the ball are then escorted to the floor for a lively cake march. As they pass before the sumptuously decorated dais where the Revelers' masked king is enthroned, the monarch acknowledges his subjects by waving his scepter.
On a signal from the krewe's captain, the fifteen previously chosen maids of the ball gather around the mammoth cake to open tiny boxes handed to them by the captain's lieutenants. Fourteen young ladies find a tiny piece of King cake and a silver bean suspended on a silver chain. The fifteenth maid finds a gold bean dangling from a brilliant chain, signifying that she will reign as queen of the Twelfth Night Revelers' ball.
She joins her king on the dais, acknowledging the curtsies of the krewe's maids and lieutenants and the approbation of her subjects. Then, before the pageantry gives way to general dancing, the king and queen lead a Grand March around the ballroom floor.
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© 1999 Mary Fonseca. All rights reserved.
