It's the Yeast I Can Do

King cake, 02.20.12

When I was at Central Market the other night, I impulse-bought some yeast packets (who says that?), so I had everything on hand to throw together a king cake in time for Mardi Gras. Have you noticed how often “because I had everything already” is my reason for baking? Can someone please just start doing my grocery shopping for me? Scratch-off-lotto-ticket-bribery is doing more for a gambling addiction than incentivizing H-E-B trips.

Anyway, I partially learned my lesson from last year and decided not to roll the dough into a long strip after the first rise, instead punching a hole through the middle to make a flat ring. That was smart. Swapping the cream cheese filling for cinnamon sugar? Also smart. Doubling the filling to better balance out the bread ratio? Genius. Getting impatient and using melted butter instead of softened in that filling? Totally fine. But combine those decisions with my OCD about “oh well maybe I could just nudge that bit of dough to make that side more even” and you find yourself with a tsunami of brown sugar and cinnamon all over my stovetop. And that was before flipping the whole mess onto a cookie sheet. Someday I’ll learn, guys.

Adapted somewhat generously from All Recipes

King cake, 03.06.11

So it’s not quite Fat Tuesday, and it turned out a little lopsided (there has to be an easier way to form a torus than conjoining the ends of a cylinder — nerds?), but judging by how my house smelled when it came out of the oven, I’d say neither of those things matters. As for the recipe: I axed the lemon altogether, since I think lemon and nutmeg, while delicious separately, would make me queasy together, and added cinnamon to make it more of a balanced coffee cake palette of flavors. Thanks to Leah for the inspiration to get this done!

Adapted generously from All Recipes