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It’s Good To Be The King Cake

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By Chad Petri Reporter

M30o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr It’s Good To Be The King Cake

Published: Tue, January 29, 2008 - 2:07 pm
Last Updated: Tue, January 29, 2008 - 7:28 pm

Chad Petri

Around The Little Cake Shop in Spanish Fort, you can literally smell Mardi Gras in the oven. The tiny bakery churns out more than 100 king cakes every season. The traditional treat starts as raw ingredients. Flour, yeast, eggs, sugar and butter are tossed into a mixer and swirled into dough. The dough is cut into one pound loaves and allowed to rise.

“Through all those steps when you have other things going on in the shop too,” says Little Cake Shop owner Lorrie Chambers. “It's fun because we do it once a year and it ends up something new to do.” There is a little trick when doing these cakes. You want to work quickly with the dough but not too quickly

“You have to give time for the dough to rise for it to act and the yeast to raise and it makes a prettier king cake if you don't rush it,” says Chambers. Cakes are rolled on to a floured table. The dough is flattened into a rectangle and then prepped with whatever filling strikes the customer's fancy.

“You do a cheese cake, cheese cake and cherry cinnamon streusel cheese cake and blueberry's very popular,” says Chambers. “Then you roll them up and make the traditional shape.” The rolled up cake rings get a liberal coating of egg wash. Then they're baked to a golden brown. The final step is decorating with icing and colored sugars. For those getting their hands dirty, the dough can be the trickiest part.

“It's just tough and ‘pulley’ when you're trying to roll it out,” says baker Karen Jones. “The more you roll the more it comes back in so you want it to expand out and sometimes it doesn't do exactly what you want it to do.” It takes about 30 minutes to pound out each cake, but the real reward is boxing it and sending it off.

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I tried a King Cake for the first time this Mardi Grad season and it’s great if you like sweets. I heat it slightly and it taste just like a freshly baked cinnamon roll with icing.

Posted by 2652 on 02/03/08 - 8:46 pm • Report Abuse .

No, RPA is right. I used to manage a restaurant and I know a lot of things about food-borne illness. MOST food poisoning is due to improper handling/handwashing, NOT from “bad food.”

RPA was right on in saying that the worker should have been using gloves and should NOT have been wearing jewelry--rings harbor a good deal of germs--including E Coli, Salmonella and Listeria. It is nearly impossible to effectively rid your hands of these pathogens while wearing rings as they hide in tiny cracks in the jewelry and continue to reproduce.

Moon Pies are okay as long as they practiced proper handling techniques in the factory throughout preparation until they were sealed in the package. Of course, you should wash your hands before you eat them.

Happy Mardi Gras!

Posted by navkat on 01/31/08 - 4:23 am • Report Abuse .

C’mon RPA...so you’ll catch moon pies, beads and every other kind of junk thrown off Mardi Gras floats from the drunken hands that have been God knows where...gladly eat that pie and hang those beads around yours and your kids necks but then complain about this little bakery not using gloves before the BAKE this dough? Get a life...or advertise a little btter for your own bakery. That way, you wouldn’t have to be so obvious about knocking someone elses! Oh, and please trust me....this comes from wayyyy out in west Mobile. No friend, relative or customer of the place on the news...or may be I should just say lighten up a little...Happy Mardi Gras!

Posted by Jay M. Gee on 01/30/08 - 9:05 am • Report Abuse .

I watched the report this morning...the King Cake looked delicious, but the baker wasn’t wearing any plastic/latex gloves while she moved the confection....plus she wore a large array of jewelry at the same time...A MAJOR Health violation....I hope that she only handled the cake for your report, and not anyothers afterwards…

Posted by RPA_33 on 01/29/08 - 10:37 pm • Report Abuse .