The basic AF King Cake recipe

We mentioned in today's long rambling post about Mardi Gras and rituals and whatnot that we would post our king cake recipe.  Therefore, here now, is that recipe. 

Bloom a package of yeast in ½ cup of warm milk (heated to about 100 - 110 degrees F) and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

Combine  that mixture with 1 melted stick of butter, 2 eggs, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp nutmeg, lemon zest, a cap of vanilla extract and a cap of almond extract (or a dash of each... or of either... or however much you like, just don’t drink the whole bottle) and whisk. 

Add between 3 and 3 ½ cups of flour and stir until it comes together into a dough. If you have a stand mixer, then do whatever you do with those. I don’t have one so I kneaded the dough by hand for about 10 minutes. Form the dough into a ball and place in a greased bowl to rise for an hour. It looks like this when you start.

And then an hour later it looks like this.  

Yes, it did actually rise. Seriously, don't worry about it. It's fine. 

Anyway, while your dough is seriously, actually rising, you can make the basic AF king cake filling.  To do that you will combine   ⅔ cup of packed brown sugar, ½ tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp nutmeg, and ¼ tsp salt and mix it with 4 tablespoons of melted butter to form a paste.

Turn out your actually risen dough and roll it into a 10 inch by 24 inch rectangle (because this is roughly the size of my cutting board) It should also be about ¼ to ½ inch thick. Get a pizza wheel and split it in half long way across the middle.  Paste the filling over each half leaving a bit of space toward the edge.  It will look like this. 

Yes, I know that is not exactly a rectangle. Again, it's fine.

 

Next, roll each half up (again longways) into tubes.  I suppose you could cut and roll three tubes if you are fancy which I am not. 

Braid the two (or three for fancy people) tubes and form them into a ring. Like this but less clumsily.

Cover and let it rise again for about an hour.  It should just about double in si... LOOK IT ROSE, OKAY? Seriously, it is fine. Do not get worried if you think this is not rising as much as you think it should. You are doing fine and should worry less in general. 

 

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 35 minutes. Set it out on a rack to cool.  Look at that. It blew up real good in the oven. Nothing to worry about. And you were worried.

 

There’s a bunch of ways you can ice and decorate this thing. You can make a lot of icing or a little bit or none at all. You can use the big sprinkles or the colored sugar or neither. Whatever you want. But you have to put something on it or it will just look like a big naked cinnamon roll. 

 

I made mine look like a second grade art project by mixing three separate bowls of icing and dying them in Mardi Gras colors. Each bowl was about ½ cup of powdered sugar, at least a tablespoon of milk (actually more milk than that but only add a tablespoon at a time until you get the consistency right), and a dash of vanilla extract. Slather all of that stuff on there while alternating the colors and voila.

 

Oh almost forgot. You will want to hide a baby in there somewhere.  The odds are pretty high anybody reading this, especially this time of year, already has at least one king cake baby in their home somewhere. You just have to look around a bit. Shouldn't be too hard.