Although she didn’t mention it in her post, Nola challenged me via the Twitter to a king cake post-off. I’m not going abdicate to her detailed post just yet, but will spill one dirty little secret: I’m not all that about king cakes. They just don’t do it for me; it’s probably that I don’t have that big of a sweet tooth.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t ever recall turning down a piece of king cake. It’s just hard to find a perfect one for me. A fine balancing act has to be maintained between dryness and icing; and then there’s the question of fillings. I really don’t mind fillings in a king cake, they do a lot to counteract an otherwise dry dough. But the problem is that I find fillings to be too…filling.
So a perfect king cake for me would be one with a lot of flavor, very moist, icing not too thick, and especially not too thick a coating of the colored sugar. That can be kind of gritty.
So, traditional, non-filled king cakes I’ve really liked include Haydels, Randazzo’s and also a place on the Northshore called Nonna’s. I can’t say which filled ones I really like because the filling kind of takes over, I’m usually glad when eating it that the cake is not dry.
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, either. But it’s king cake, man! Are you mad??