Food

The King of All Cakes

Celebrate Mardi Gras with a real New Orleans treat

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If there's one day when we're sad to be in Providence, it's on Mardi Gras. As much as we love our city, it's hard to sit through a regular workday on Fat Tuesday knowing that down in New Orleans they're celebrating with music, parades, tradition and, of course, plenty of food. Our only solution is to crank up the live stream of WWOZ and eat our feelings in king cake.

For those who aren't familiar, king cake is a sweet, ring-shaped cake, usually topped with icing in the Mardi Gras colors of puple, green and gold, that is typically enjoyed on Fat Tuesday (and any number of other occasions because, after all, we're talking about New Orleans here). Hidden inside the cake is a small baby doll (said to represent the baby Jesus, as the cake has its roots in pre-Lenten Catholic traditions), and the person who finds the doll is king (or queen) for the day. Typical Southern custom also dictates that the finder buys the next king cake.

We were worried that even this small measure of confectionary comfort would not be available to us all the way up north, but fear not: LaSalle Bakery has us covered. They make a classic king cake to sweeten your Fat Tuesday with one small departure from tradition: they place the baby on top. Their concern is that us Yankees, unfamiliar as we are with Southern peculiarities, may not realize that there is a doll inside and choke on it. Other than that, it's the perfect treat for our little inter-office fais do-do.

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