Mardi Gras King Cake Recipe

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This traditional Mardi Gras King cake recipe is worlds better than anything you can buy at the grocery store. This simple spiced yeast dough gets filled with a cinnamon sugar filling, twisted into a ring, and adorned with colored sugar. Add a tiny plastic baby to pull the tradition full circle!

Today’s recipe is brought to you by my former super persistent coworkers. Like, the most persistent coworkers can be to pressure you into baking something that is kind of a big deal and is not taken lightly around its consumers.

As the resident baker at my wet chemistry lab job, I was strongly urged to take the store-bought tradition they’d always used and make it better. Of course, as someone who can make yeast bread with her eyes closed, I was the perfect woman for the job. I took what I knew about store-bought King cake, drew up a better, more delicious, and softer and fluffier homemade version. The results were perfect and until I left that job to work for myself, making this cake was in my unofficial job title.

The New Orleans style cake, which is similar to the versions found in Spain and Latin America, is ring shaped, and topped with icing and colorful sanding sugar in yellow, purple, and green.

The yellow color represents power, the purple represents justice, and the green represents faith. The ring shape of the cake symbolizes the unity of all of these things.

It is said that the person who received the slice with the baby inside it is known as the king and receives good luck for the coming year. That person is then left with the responsibility of bringing a king cake to the celebration the following year, so it’s fun to do this exchange with groups of people like coworkers.

That said, every Mardi Gras, someone at my former job brings in a traditional King Cake, and everyone waits patiently all day to see who retrieves the baby from inside of it.

Sound weird? It kind of is.

Mardi Gras Cake Ingredients

This king cake is that babka dough split into two logs and twisted together and shaped into a circle.

SO. EASY.

Don’t let the ingredient list scare you– you use a lot of the same ingredients in the bread that you do the filling, so just be sure to read everything carefully so you remember to separate your eggs into yolks and whites.

For the cinnamon filling, you will need:
• brown sugar
• all-purpose flour
• ground cinnamon
• salt
• egg white
• unsalted butter

For the icing, you will need:
• powdered sugar
• milk (or cream)
• vanilla extract

This sanding sugar quad-container has all of the colors you will want, plus some pink. This is my favorite recommendation for folks who don’t have access to a wide variety of sanding sugar in their grocery stores.

If you want to check out your local grocery store, you can likely find sanding sugar in the baking section. If not there, any craft store will have them available in the cake decorating section.

And if you don’t believe me, I even made a video for you so you can see for yourself exactly what I mean in my instructions.

I wouldn’t lie to you– yeast bread is not hard. And I make it super simple to understand in that post. So, really, give it a read if the whole yeast bread thing is intimidating to you. And then come back here and apply all your new knowledge to this king cake.

You’ll be the talk of the town at work come Fat Tuesday this year!

If you can’t feel the temperature of the water, it’s perfect. Stir yeast in with a fork until it is dissolved and set aside.

Next, blend the milk, sugar, salt, vanilla extract, and cinnamon. Stir in the butter, 2 egg yolks, and yeast mixture.

Gradually stir in flour. If you are using a stand mixer, you can use your dough hook attachment. If you’re mixing your dough by hand, continue to use a wooden spoon. Add the bread flour until your dough is soft enough to handle, usually when it can easily pull away from the sides of your bowl.

Turn out dough on a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8-10 minutes. You may need to add the last cup or so of bread flour by hand. Your dough should feel like PlayDoh to the touch and “snap” when you pull it apart.

Next, let the dough rise for 2 hours, by placing it in a warm, greased bowl, turning the dough to coat the top. Cover with a towel and let it rise.

Once the dough has doubled, punch it down and turn out onto a floured surface, then let it rest while you make the cinnamon filling.

Add one reserved egg white and the butter and stir until everything is combined. Easy peasy!

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat, then roll your dough out into a large rectangle about 14″ x 18″ in size.

Next, use a sharp knife or pizza cutter to cut the rectangle in half long ways. You will now have two large rectangles about 7″ x 18″ in size.

Using a spatula, spread the filling evenly over each rectangle of dough, leaving about a 1″ border around the edges.

Working from the long side, roll each rectangle of dough into a tight log. Gently roll the logs back and forth to stretch them until they are about 20″ long.

Transfer both logs to the prepared pan, then pinch one end of each log together and alternate the logs over and under each other (similar to a braid) to form a twisted loaf of bread.

Connect the starting and ending pieces together to form the logs into a circle.

Cover with a towel and allow to rest and rise again for 1 hour.

Allow to cool completely on the baking sheet before decorating.

Then, of course, decorate with the sanding sugar in whatever manner you prefer. All together all over the take, in sections, whatever you desire!

I usually just gently tilt one side of the king cake up once it’s ready to be served and jam the baby in through the bottom.

This bread is quite the spectacle, once you cover it in those yellow, green, and purple sprinkles. But under it all is the cinnamoniest (technical term) yeast bread that is pillowy yet crunchy in some spots and approximately one million times better than one you can make from a box mix or buy from the grocery store.

If you’re not feeling the icing, you can thin it out and drizzle it on, but I highly suggest keeping it.

Yeah, it’s super sweet, but the bread itself is not overly sweet at all, so they complement each other nicely, and you’ll be surprised how creamy dreamy that icing stays.

How to decorate a Mardi Gras Baby Cake

Decorating a King cake is really simple, as it just uses a quick icing and colorful sugar/sprinkles. I like to use sanding sugar as opposed to sprinkles.

How to serve Mardi Gras King Cake

Since this cake is similar to a cinnamon roll, I like to serve it warmed up with coffee or tea, but it is just as delicious at room temperature.

I should note that when you bake up your bread ring, there’s a very good (like 100%) chance some of the cinnamon filling will spill out. This is completely ok. It will look like a mess and like you lost a ton of your filling, but you didn’t.

Plus, it will harden on the underside of the cake and leave you with ultra crunchy pieces that are, in my opinion, the best part of the whole thing. So don’t worry too much about seams sticking out.

Do you feel well-equipped to tackle your own king cake for Mardi Gras season this year? I totally believe in you.