For a Mardi Gras of unknowns, king cake follows tradition at Adrian's Bakery - NOLA.com

As a longtime New Orleans baker, Adrian Darby has learned some unassailable truths.

He knows his days will start before dawn, he knows his customers would revolt if he ever stopped making the praline pound cake and he knows Carnival season is his bread and butter.

This year, though, facing a Mardi Gras without parades and with much of the social landscape for the king cake tradition altered by the pandemic, Adrian’s Bakery is entering uncharted territory. See the full story on this year’s king cake season expectations here.

Darby got his start in the businesses as a baker at the Woolworths department store, once a landmark business in downtown New Orleans. In 2001, he and his wife Marcia Darby started their own business in Gentilly. Adrian’s Bakery grew to three locations with outposts Uptown and in Slidell before Hurricane Katrina hit.

Now, the whole business flows through the Adrian’s Bakery storefront in Gentilly.

In a normal Carnival season, 13,000 king cakes will come through this small bakery, built in a one-time Pizza Hut takeout location in a strip mall. Demand always ramps up at the end of the season, when the parades are rolling. Adrian’s can sell 1,000 a day during that final weekend of Carnival.

Adrian’s is part of a wide range of king cake makers across New Orleans, a roster that includes small neighborhood bakeries, large grocery stores, wholesale operations, restaurant pastry chefs and home-based businesses.

Worked deep into local Carnival rituals, king cake has also become craze in recent years, greatly expanding the number and types of products sold under its banner - covering everything from king cake stuffed with boudin or crawfish to king cake-flavored vodka and king cake jewelry.

Adrian’s takes a much more straight-ahead approach, feeding the appetites and tastes of its largely local clientele. King cake stuffed with cream cheese is about as exotic as it gets here.

The top seller is still the plain king cake, the most traditional king cake there is, with no icing, just a glittering top crust of purple, green and gold granulated sugar.

Darby says the appeal is in the dough itself, and also the continuity of tradition and flavor that his customers appreciate.

“I can make you any kind of cake you want, but around here, my people want the king cake they grew up eating,” he said.

Family continuity runs through Adrian’s Bakery too. Earvin

On a busy day in the lead up to Twelfth Night, Darby's son Earvin Larry Darby worked beside him, weighing piece of dough on an iron scale that is older than himself.

Through the day, the small work area tucked behind the sales floor saw a stream of relatives coming through on errands, assignments and visits.

One of them was Darby’s newest grandson, Marquise, just five months old. He marveled at a table full of king cakes from the arms of his father Myron Johnson.

“That’s the real king cake baby there,” Adrian Darby said.

The rest of the room broke up in laughter, then everyone got back to the work of keeping a family bakery cooking.