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King Cake 2023 Week 2

2023-13 Breads on Oak traditional This is one of the best vegan king cakes in town and it is tasty. It’s the cinnamon roll style which isn’t my favorite but still tasty. Also they don’t use a plastic baby but go old school with an almond instead… My Dad said they would bake an entire shelled pecan in cakes in the late 1940s. A plastic baby might be easier on your teeth!

2023-14 random funeral king cake traditional It was OK. I have no idea where it was from. Funerals are sad.

2023-15 Gracious Bakery chocolate filled. The Gracious Bakery cakes are a nice brioche style and the chocolate is a good quality dark chocolate. This has been my house king cake over the last week but even slightly stale it has been delicious. Bonus for the creepy blue baby!

2023-16 Dorignac’s cream cheese was this week’s work king cake. It came in a little squished but was tasty and the cream cheese was flavorful and not overly goopy.

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King Cake 2023 – Week 1

First step was figuring out how to log back into my site.

Week 1 of the 2023 carnival season was a good one… 6 king cakes sampled, 1 parade watched, beaucoup friends visited and 1 brother & 2 nieces hung out with.

2023-1 Mad Batter traditional – I saw that I had a novelty Mad Batter last year but their traditional was really good. More the cinnamon roll style which isn’t really my favorite but it’s been a year so I gobbled it up.

2023-2 Hi Do creme filled – I stopped into a friend’s apartment after Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc and she offered me a slice so it was only polite to sample. Delicious. Hi Do’s fillings are always good.

2023-3 Nolita traditional – several friends have been raving about this one. I thought it was a smidge dense but I will say this one held up over several days so that’s great for a brioche style.

2023-4 Hi Do traditional – The king cake that I brought to my Mom’s. Simple and fresh

2023-5 Gracie’s Bakery traditional – When I got to my Mom’s, I was able to have a small slice of this home bakery version which is traditionally braided, you almost never see that anymore. Of course I love this one since it’s based on my Mom’s recipe.

2023-6 La Louisiane traditional – My coworker brought this one. She picked up from Sam’s. I’ve always liked this commercial bakery. Glad to see it’s still a good choice.

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King Cake 2022 – Wrap up

Only one more king cake to add…

2022-25 Galette des Rois from Gracious Bakery – Decided to end the season with this beauty! The frangipan was delicious and it has a French fevre instead of a plastic baby. Perfect end to the season.

I also made it to 31 (!) parades: Neferititi, Chewbaccus, KdV, Delusion, Cleopatra, Oshun, ALLA, Pontchartrain, Choctaw, Freret, Sparta, Pygmalion, Femme Fatale, Carrolton, King Arthur, Druids, Nyx (to see how the mighty have fallen), Babylon, Chaos, Muses, Hermes, D’Etat, Morpheus, Iris, Tucks, Endymion, Thoth, Bacchus, Proteus, Orpheus, and Rex. And that’s with skipping a bunch because it was cold or I was tired. Phew.

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King Cake 2022 – Week 7

2022-22 Gambino’s traditional – I hadn’t had a Gambino’s in a couple of years and I remember why now. It’s too fluffy/cinnamon roll texture for me.

2022-23 Gracious Bakery chocolate – My mom says chocolate doesn’t belong in king cakes. And I’m like Pierre and say, “I don’t care!” This brioche was delicious and the chocolate had a nice bittersweet flavor

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King Cake 2022 – Week 6

I started the week off with a duplicate slice of Caluda’s plain but it was handed to me at a party so how could I resist?! Much fresher and fluffier than the stale piece I had work.

2022-20 Caluda’s cream cheese filled – Caluda’s cakes are following me! I am not generally a fan of filled king cakes and this one exemplifies why. It’s just a big glop of cream cheese that isn’t particularly tasty in the middle of some dough. I picked around the filling and tossed it

2022-21 Mad Batter’s Bakery doberge – This turned up at my work and I had read about it and was curious to try it. Let’s get the doberge part of out the way. It is not in any way shape or form a doberge cake. (Old school New Orleans specialty with multiple layers of thin cake, pudding like filling and icing/ganache.) The cake is delicious and very cinnamon-y. The icing is what reads as doberge and is fun for a novelty….. OK wait there are some blobs of filling. I had a bite with some chocolate pudding but never saw any in the lemon side.

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King Cake 2022 – Week 5

2022-18 Norma’s guava/cream cheese – oh my. This is my uncle’s favorite king cake and I get why. It’s not really American style cream cheese. To me it’s somewhere between sour cream and cream cheese which is a nice sour note with the guava and a really light fluffy cake. Yummy.

Norma’s guava cream cheese

2022-19 Mckenzie’s traditional – Soft and fresh and not too sweet. I love this king cake; it’s a better version of the one from my childhood.

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King Cake 2022 – Week 4

2022-14 & 15 Two minis from Bittersweet Confections, one traditional and one chocolate purchased from King Cake Hub – The chocolate is amazing (even if Mom says chocolate makes it not a king cake). And the traditional is also very good but I need to just remove some of the icing.

Bittersweet Confections

2022-16 homemade french style – so impressed with my coworker who made this delicious cake!

Homemade!

2022-17 Caluda’s mini – my coworker hedged her bets and brought some mini Caluda’s in case folks didn’t like her homemade effort. Hers was so good that these were pale (and a little stale) in comparison.

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King Cake 2022 – week 2

I went 3 whole days without King Cake!

2022-7: Batture Chantilly – this is from a small cafe in Jefferson Parish and is not what I would call chantilly. It’s closer to the Maurice’s Pontchatoula strawberry but smaller AND just as delicious. The king cake is split and filled with whipped cream (and maybe a little pastry creme) along with strawberries and blueberries. A lovely refreshing cake.

Batture Chantilly – forgot to take a pic before slicing

2022-8: Haydel’s traditional – Bro2 picked this up and brought it to Mom’s house so I got a slice. Haydel’s is almost always good and this was delicous.

Haydel’s traditional

2022-9 unknown traditional – I stopped by a friend’s house and someone had dropped off this cake that he had purchased at a farmer’s market. It had cream cheese based icing and was good but a little too sweet for me.

2022-10 Mae’s Bakeshop mini king cake monkey bread – another item I sampled at a friend’s house. My mom used to make a MG monkey bread so I was excited to try this version. It was very moist and had a rum kick!

Mmmm monkey bread

2022-11 Brennan’s bananas foster – Where’s the banana? Other people are loving this version but it was not my favorite.

2022-12 Robert’s traditional – a solid choice for a grocery store king cake.

Robert’s traditional

Jeez! 6 more varieties this week. I’m going to go back to my max pandemic weight at this rate.

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King Cake 2022 – pt1

King Cake Hub is back for 2022 so I stopped in on Epiphany and purchased

2022-1: Hi Do traditional/plain – Soft and slightly sweet. The perfect start to a 7+ week king cake season! Picked up from King Cake Hub

Gracious Bakery & Hi Do king cakes

2022-2: Gracious Bakery almond queen cake – Queen because it’s not decorated with purple, green and gold, I guess. The icing was just a bit too sweet for me but the almond filling was delicious. Picked up from King Cake Hub

2022-3: Gracie’s Bakery apple havarti cake – My niece brought this fancy version to the memorial we had for my dad. I love the Gracie’s recipe which has no preservatives and is a yeast forward dough. The apples had a nice bite to them and the harvarti made for a richer cake. We set up like a picnic around the family tomb and thoroughly confused the tourists so that’s a plus.

Gracie’s Bakery Apple havarti with honey glaze

2022-4: Gracie’s Bakery traditional – I ordered a traditional from this yummy home bakery and gobbled up the small within 2 days. Love the cinnamon and the hit of almond… and that the gold baby was baked inside.

Gracie’s Bakery traditional

2022-5: NOCCA/Cake Cafe apple goat cheese – I always heard about the Cake Cafe king cakes but never sampled one until now. I always thought the icing looked like too much (I know I know the piles of sugar are also too much but it’s what I grew up with), but I was wrong. The icing is delicious. I was not a fan of the goat cheese because I thought it overpowered the pastry; I am in the minority with this opinion. Also I’m not sure what happened but it seems like the cakes were not properly risen so they were very dense. Ordered via King Cake Hub and delivered via Door Dash to my work.

NOCCA / Cake Cafe with 2 fillings

2022-6: NOCCA/Cake Cafe raspberry cream cheese – I liked this one much more that the apple goat. The raspberry was nice and tart and made a nice balance with the cream cheese and the dough. Again this cake did not seem properly risen so maybe it was just the batch? This is a cake created by a culinary program of students so isn’t as consistent as a commercial bakery. Ordered via King Cake Hub and delivered via Door Dash to my work.

That’s kind of a lot for week 1!