NEW ORLEANS (AP) - King cakes - the treats that come around only during Mardi Gras - are rich in history and tradition, but many bakers push the boundaries with quirky ingredients.
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SKIP SWEET FOR SAVORY
Twins Burgers and Sweets makes the Boudin King Cake. The savory creation is hamburger bun dough, with boudin (a Cajun-style sausage) stuffed inside, sprinkled with crackling crumbs and bacon bits and served with a bottle of Steen’s pure cane syrup. Bill Guilbeaux, who owns the bakery with his twin, says it’s been labeled the most Cajun thing you’ll ever eat: “It’s round, it’s the shape of a king cake and it’s delicious.”
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FLAVOR TRIFECTA
District Donuts. Sliders. Brew. offers one king cake through the season, with the traditional braided cinnamon-laced dough. It’s the Mardi Gras-colored cream cheese topping that gets exotic: The green is a matcha pan dan, the purple is an ube coconut, and the gold is a satsuma vanilla. Aaron Vogel, co-owner, says: “It is fun to produce something for our bakers that is very different and out of the norm.”
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FIT FOR THE KING
Elvis Presley’s birthday - Jan. 8 - falls within the Mardi Gras season, so Maggie Scales, executive pastry chef at the Donald Link Restaurant Group , turned his favorite sandwich into a king cake for restaurant Cochon. Using cinnamon roll-style dough, she then adds peanut butter and bananas, marshmallow, and candied bacon. “Talk about heavy and sweet,” Scales said. “That hits all of them. But that is delicious.”
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LAMINATED … WITH BUTTER
At Willa Jean , chef Kelly Fields starts with a Danish dough, laminates it (basically layer lots of butter inside) and spreads the dough with a generous dose of espresso pastry cream and espresso chocolate sugar before rolling it up and topping it with caramelized chocolate and small pops of cholate: “We … wanted to present a new idea that seemed out of the ordinary where we were actually really just getting back to basic French techniques.”
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