I think technically I should call this a “King Loaf” more than “King Cake” because of how this actually turned out.  But I think if I called it a King Loaf, nobody would know what I’m talking about.  So…KING CAKE!

Again, another holiday, another excuse to bake something.  And for some reason I remembered a fabulous-looking recipe I read on Liv Life blog last year for a King Cake recipe from A World of Cake, a cultural-cake cookbook she’d been blogging about.  Dutifully I looked it up and started cakin’ it up.

The first surprise I ran into was the crazy amount of flour required – 4 3/4 cups; when you’re used to baking cakes that have maybe 2 cups of flour in them, it’s weird to use anything more than that. At that point it occurred to me exactly how big this cake might end up being.  Hmm…

But not to worry!  A giant lump of excellently-smelling dough was made: lemon zest, nutmeg, cinnamon.

After I got this giant lump of dough, I divided it into 3 pieces, rolled it out into a 12×4″ rectangle, filled it with lemony-cream-cheesy filling, and rolled it into a cylinder.

   

Interesting thing about the lemony-cream-cheesy filling: it has 3 tablespoons of flour in it.  Anybody ever put flour into a filling before?  I never had.  The only thing I can assume it does is to thicken it up some, which it did quite nicely.

So after you flatten, fill, and roll all 3 pieces of dough, you get to do what I thought was the coolest part: braid the dough!  It was one of those things that you think is going to prove tricky, but ends up being insanely easy.  I like those kinds of moments.

At this point the directions say to curl the dough into a lop and seal the ends together, but I declined to do both because 1) the braid was only a foot long and it didn’t make any sense to curl it into a circle, and 2) I hate it when directions say “seal the ends together!” like it’s this big easy thing.  Does anybody know how to seal ends together and make it not look like crap?  I think it’s a conspiracy and a giant giant lie.  Just sayin’.

KABOOM!

The final loaf actually looks pretty cool, despite it looking like it was going to explode out of the pan.  I think I let the yeast sit too long, which is why it baked up so high.  Maybe?  Does anybody know more about yeast than me?  Lots of questions in this post. >.>

You can see some of the cream cheese in this picture, but it’s also pretty clear that it’s not as pervasive as it should be.  The filling definitely helped the bread stay nice a moist, but it didn’t have the nice clear lines of cream cheese that I was hoping for.  Next time I’ll definitely put more filing into the 2 rolls that I skimped on!

All in all this recipe is awesome.  You get a super fragrant and sweet dough with swirls and undertones of lemony cream-cheesy filling.  Share it with your friends, put a baby in it or don’t – it’s still way tasty.  And let me know if you figure out how to curl it into a circle and seal the ends together because that, children is real magic.

New Orleans King Cake

Find it at Liv Life!