Chef Kevin Belton's king cake. Photo by Denny Cuthbert
Should I bake a king cake this year? That question pops into my head as soon as Christmas season winds down and Carnival heats up.
The answer is inevitably, no. New Orleans bakers make them in every style, from cinnamon roll to brioche to puff pastry, and every flavor, from savory crawfish to sweet cream cheese, so why should I bother?
But when members of Where NOLA Eats Facebook group began sharing king recipes and photos, along with tips for braiding and stuffing them, I began to waver.
“There’s no reason to make a king cake if you don’t enjoy it,” said Amy George, a Facebook group member who shared her recipe. “If baking is not pleasure for you, then don’t.”
George, a professor at Tulane University who teaches a Tulane Interdisciplinary Experience Seminar called “Cocktails, Cayenne and Creoles: The Myths and Realities of New Orleans Food and Drink.” Making king cakes is as much a part of her Mardi Gras as reaching for beads, and has been since she moved to the city from rural New Hampshire in the 1990s.
Her first rental was on Gen. Pershing just off a parade route. She had no car and once the parades began, she had little hope of getting in and out of her neighborhood. So she did what she loved to do: She baked.
“I made king cakes between parades,” she said. “It became a part of the sound, the taste and the smell of Carnival. I’d time the risings to go along with parade breaks. I’d hear a drum and I knew it was time to knead. When the last float went by, I knew it was time to go in and punch the dough down.”
Besides, she said, she loves to bake for friends.
“Baking is an act of showing love for people,” she said.
The recipe she uses is based on one her ex-husband brought home after taking a class at Tulane in the early 1990s.
She began sharing the recipe after Hurricane Katrina and the floods at the request of displaced friends.
Helping out-of-towners is one reason chef Kevin Belton included a king cake recipe in his 2016 cookbook “Kevin Belton’s Big Flavors of New Orleans,” written with Rhonda Findley. The cookbook was a companion for his WYES-TV cooking show of the same name.
But the New Orleans native said he’s more likely to hit Manny Randazzo’s than the kitchen when he wants a king cake.
“We always bought ’em,” Belton said. “My theory is that as long as someone can do it better than you, let them.”
Still, he explains that “in that first book, I was trying to incorporate all of the traditional things that, if people come to New Orleans, they might want to have. If you didn’t want to call up and have one shipped to you, this is one of that you could make and have friends over.”
Belton remembers when the big dogs of the New Orleans king cake world were McKenzie’s, Gambino’s, Haydel’s and Lawrence’s.
“Then all of a sudden, other places started to make them,” Belton said, and the variety exploded.
“That’s one of the great things about king cake,” he said. “It is just like all the different traditional New Orleans dishes. They’re all good and they’re all a little bit different.”
His recipe, which he shares below, is a good one for less experienced bakers, said Belton.
“It’s just simple, basic and I don’t think you can mess it up,” he said.
The chef and TV host, who will open his third WYES show, “Kevin Belton’s New Orleans Celebrations,” in April, is pretty darn loyal to his favorite, Manny Randazzo’s. He wraps the slices snugly in plastic-coated freezer paper and places them inside resealable bags, so he can enjoy king cake whenever he wants.
When he got married late last year, the king cakes were front and center.
“I went and picked up a couple of super king cakes on Dec. 23 and put them in the freezer at WYES,” he said. “On Dec. 29, we yanked them out a few hours ahead of time and let them thaw. Then I just set them on the table as the groom’s cake.”
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