Let the Okay Times Roll: King Cake

I don't make a lot of yeasted breads, and one of the major reasons why is the fact that it's difficult to work them into my schedule during the week. But with a fortuitous federal government snow closure on March 3, I had plenty of time to tackle a king cake for Mardi Gras. I'm fairly new to king cakes; the first time I tasted one was in 2001 when I happened to be in Houston for a trial during Mardi Gras. I'm pretty sure I've still got that gold plastic baby around here somewhere.

But until now, I had never made a king cake myself. I know that many (most?) varieties include sweet fillings, but I decided to go with a plain king cake recipe from DamGoodSweet by David Guas. I figured that the cake must be especially good to stand up its own with no filling whatsoever. 

To make the cake, you combine yeast with warm milk, a little bread flour, and honey, and let the mixture rise for 20 minutes. After the dough has doubled in volume, you mix in more bread flour, cake flour, eggs, an egg yolk, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, almond extract, and salt. You mix the dough using a dough hook, slowly incorporating softened butter, and kneading until the dough comes together into a slack ball. You transfer the dough to a buttered bowl and let it rise for a hour, until doubled.

After the dough is ready, you roll it out into a 6-inch by 24-inch rectangle, and then roll up the rectangle tightly to form a long rope shape. You bring the ends of the rope together to form an oval, pinch the seam shut, and then place the ring on a parchment-lined pan, cover, and let it rise for another hour.

After the rise, you brush the dough with egg wash (egg mixed with a little milk) and bake. The recipe says to bake for 25-30 minutes, or "until golden and cooked through." I wasn't sure how to tell when the cake was done, because the outside quickly became quite dark from the egg wash. I used a thermometer to take the internal temperature of the bread after 25 minutes, and when I saw that it was reading 208 degrees, I figured it was done. 

After the cake was completely cool, I drizzled on an icing made from powdered sugar, corn syrup, milk, and vanilla, and then added the three traditional colors of granulated sugar: gold, purple, and green. I thought the cake looked pretty festive.

As for how the cake tasted -- well, it was okay. It was basically sweet bread with a touch of cinnamon. But it wasn't terribly interesting, and the icing and crunchy sugar garnish only went so far to help liven it up a bit. In retrospect, I really wish I had selected a king cake recipe that included a filling, because this cake might look like a party, but the taste wasn't much to celebrate.

Recipe: "King Cake" from DamGoodSweet by Davis Guas.