King Cake Baby Blues

Even before the flood, it was becoming more and more likely that one would have to travel outside of Orleans Parish to find a decent King Cake. After the demise of McKenzie's the number of neighborhood bakeries in the city producing the traditional Carnival treat sharply declined. At one time it was possible to sample cakes from a variety of pastry makers without wandering too far out of one's own section. In Gentilly we had a few McKenzie's locations nearby and man that chocolate and cheese filled thing they did was dangerous. Sill I was always partial to the cakes from Lawrence's on Elysian Fields. A few years ago, Lawrence's sold out to Gambino's. The Gambino's king cakes weren't bad but I missed the giant "Mr. Wedding Cake" billboard on top of the building. Of course the flood made this a moot complaint.

Nowadays, most of the neighborhood style bakeries like France's or Randazzo's or Haydel's are strictly suburban operations. There are a couple of trendy bakeries in New Orleans that produce "traditional French style" king cakes. But this is little more than another sign of the gentrification and pretense taking hold in the city and bears no resemblance to the kind of tradition we grew up with. With a few exceptions, most King Cakes in the city are found at the grocery store. But buying your King Cake at Sav-a-Center requires a massive sacrifice in quality.. not only in the pastry itself but in one other element which I will get to in a moment.

So far this year, the best King Cake I've found in New Orleans was purchased at the New York Bagel shop on Magazine Street. Friday morning, I picked one up at Still Perkin'. Their supplier is La Louisianne Bakery in Harahan. The cake is of high quality...not too much icing.. light and fluffy bread. But much to my disappointment it seems that the grocery store heresy of including the baby separately in the box instead of inside the cake has caught on with La Louisianne.

Supermarket bakers have begun shying away from including the baby in the cake for fear of litigation on behalf of some unsavvy choking consumer. This is a silly and illegitimate fear as it is highly unlikely that anyone who buys a King Cake in New Orleans would do so unaware of the baby. Unfortunately, the big grocers' management companies no longer tend to be local. Big bakers like Haydel's who ship king cakes nationwide may have a more plausible reason to fear lawsuit but even then, it's a shame to see some of them bow to fear of litigation.

Not to sound too much like an old man here but in my day we had plastic baby dolls inside our cakes and we liked it that way, dammit! Last week Dad, in a desperate search for a chocolate filled King Cake ordered one custom-prepared at Langenstein's. They were happy to comply with his request but it turns out that even Langenstein's now includes the baby separately in the packaging. Something is very wrong here.