Gulf Coast King Cake
In the southern United States, the tradition was brought to the area by colonists from France and Spain and is associated with Carnival (also known as Mardi Gras). Celebrated across the Gulf Coast region from the Florida Panhandle to East Texas, it originated in French Louisiana and King cake parties in New Orleans are documented back to the eighteenth century.
The king cake of the New Orleans tradition comes in a number of styles. The most simple, said to be the most traditional, is a ring of twisted bread similar to that used in brioche topped with icing or sugar, usually colored purple, green, and gold (the traditional Mardi Gras colors) with food coloring. There are many variants, some in more recent years featuring a filling - the most common being cream cheese, praline, cinnamon, or strawberry. A so-called "Zulu King Cake" has chocolate icing with a coconut filing, because the Krewe of Zulu parade's most celebrated throw is a coconut. Also, some bakers have now taken the liberty to offer king cakes for other holidays that immediately surround Mardi Gras season, such as green and red-icing king cakes for Christmas, red and pink-icing cakes for Valentine's Day, and green and white-icing cakes for St. Patrick's Day. Others have gone a step further and produce specialty king cakes from the beginning of football season for Louisiana State University and New Orleans Saints tailgate parties, then for Halloween, then Thanksgiving - and do not cease until after Mardi Gras season with an Easter holiday king cake. Several markets sell the cakes during the season including Dorignac's. It has become customary in the Southern culture that whoever finds the trinket must provide the next king cake or host the next Mardi Gras party.
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Famous quotes containing the words gulf, coast, king and/or cake:
“His father watched him across the gulf of years and pathos which always must divide a father from his son.”
—J.P. (John Phillips)
“Too many Broadway actors in motion pictures lost their grip on success—had a feeling that none of it had ever happened on that sun-drenched coast, that the coast itself did not exist, there was no California. It had dropped away like a hasty dream and nothing could ever have been like the things they thought they remembered.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“In a few years there will be only five kings in the world—the King of England and the four kings in a pack of cards.”
—Farouk I (1920–1965)
“We had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and spruce tops, and those of other primitive evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)