New Orleans’s king cake is a culinary symbol of Mardi Gras and the festive, months-long lead-up known as Carnival season. Beginning on January 6 and continuing until the season’s culmination on Fat Tuesday – this year taking place on March 4 – revelers across the region enjoy slice after slice of this traditional, cinnamon-flavored cake. Whoever finds the small, plastic baby figurine hidden inside is said to receive good luck, but must also purchase the next king cake.
Tradition is baked into this cake, which has evolved over thousands of years (it’s believed to have roots in ancient Rome, and different regional variants can be found across the world). Today, revelers in New Orleans can expect a ring-shaped dough – typically brioche, but not exclusively – covered in icing and sugar representing the three colors of Carnival: purple, green, and gold. Often the king cake is unfilled, but popular flavors such as cream cheese, Bavarian cream, fruit jelly, or a combination have become common as well.
The increasing popularity of king cake and a new wave of residents moving to New Orleans from all over during the last two decades has resulted in varieties of this treat that would have previously been unimaginable. Chocolate king cakes, doughnut king cakes, doggy treat king cakes, octopus king cakes and so much more are examples of a generation of bakers eager to put their own spin on this thousands-year-old tradition.
“Evolution is a good thing for food,” explained Jillian Duran, head baker at Balboni’s King Cakes. She has created several versions of ice cream-filled king cakes, as well as a cannoli version. “Foods get boring and fade away if they don’t stay current to our tastes.”
No one can accuse the king cake of fading away – it seems every time a new immigrant group or ambitious baker arrives in New Orleans, they create their own iteration.
“It’s like the city’s bakers have put together a curated, edible art walk,” said Kaitlin Guerin, owner of Lagniappe Baking Company. “All of the different cakes speak to each baker’s sensibilities, histories, and tastes. It transforms New Orleans into a city-wide king cake exhibit!”
The exhibit is showing no signs of slowing down. Many of the king cakes available in New Orleans are still considered traditional. This list, however, highlights some of the most unique varieties you can find in the Crescent City.
Bug Appétit in the Audubon Insectarium’s Cricket King Cake
The mission of New Orleans’s Audubon Insectarium is to educate visitors about the importance of insects in the environment. One way they do that is through Bug Appétit, a cafe inside the insectarium that serves several insect-infused dishes every day from 10:30 a.m. until 4 p.m.
“Eighty percent of the world’s nations already eat insects,” explained Zack Lemann, an entomologist for the Audubon Nature Institute who has earned the nickname “The Bug Chef.” “Bugs can be part of a delicious and healthy diet that is also better for our planet.”
During king cake season, one of the dishes featured at Bug Appétit is a cricket king cake that is both topped and filled with roasted crickets.
“Crickets are what I call a ‘gateway bug,’” Lemann laughed. “They are versatile for cooking and taste great. For a lot of Americans who eat bugs, crickets are where they start.”
“They also make a great king cake!” he added.
Norma’s Sweets Bakery’s Guava Cream Cheese King Cake
More than 100,000 Hondurans live in metro New Orleans, making it the largest such community in the country. Jose Castillo, who moved here with his parents in 1980, is part of that community.
Castillo’s mother opened a bakery in the city’s suburbs, and now Castillo himself owns a second location in the Mid-City neighborhood. For decades, their customer base was primarily Latinos. They sold groceries and a variety of traditional Honduran pastries, but they never thought to make king cakes.
“It wasn’t our tradition,” Castillo said, “so we didn’t think it was our place to make them.”
In the years after Hurricane Katrina, king cakes were growing in popularity, and one of their customers asked them to make a Honduran version. After some convincing, they decided to make a king cake with a traditional Honduran filling: guava and cream cheese. The local news learned what they were doing and reported on this new take on king cake.
At first Castillo was worried he would offend someone with his non-traditional version of the treat, but when word spread, he was surprised to see a line out the door.
“It was an amazing feeling,” he said. “Seeing all of these longtime New Orleanians saying nice things about our Honduran addition to their famous tradition. It was the first time I felt like I really belonged here.”
Cochon Butcher’s Elvis King Cake
The “king” in king cake refers to the Three Kings (also known as the Three Wise Men) who are said to have found the baby Jesus on the Epiphany. It is no coincidence that the day dedicated to these Three Kings, January 6, is also the day New Orleanians begin eating king cake.
The team at Cochon Butcher, however, says they aren’t particularly religious. So instead of celebrating the Three Kings, they decided to celebrate the king: Elvis Presley.
Elvis’s birthday is January 8, so the time of year lines up almost perfectly. The flavors of his favorite sandwich, it turns out, also happen to make a great king cake. Peanut butter and bananas make up the cake’s filling, while a sticky marshmallow sauce and house-cured bacon bites (it’s a butcher shop, after all) make up the topping.
Rather than hiding a small plastic baby inside this king cake, Cochon Butcher stays on brand by using a tiny pig figurine.
La Vie En Rose Cafe’s Rose Queen Cake
Pop-up baker Kirby Jones creates several one-of-a-kind king cakes, all derived from elements of her 300-year Creole heritage. Her father grew up surrounded by the sugarcane fields of nearby Lutcher, Louisiana. She featured a rose cane syrup in many of the coffee drinks she made, as well as in several pastries. When she decided to make a king cake, that same rose cane syrup filling was used, and the cake was topped with edible rose petals for a beautiful take on the seasonal cake.
In addition to her Rose Queen Cake, Jones also makes a savory Don Creole Crawfish King Cake with Louisiana crawfish tails, herbs, cheese, and the local “Holy Trinity” of onions, peppers, and celery.
New this year, she added a hot sausage and cheese king cake using sausages from longtime local Creole sausage-maker Vance Vaucresson.
Jones’s king cakes are available for order on Instagram, as well as at the King Cake Hub (1464 S. Broad Street) while supplies last.
Saba’s Babka King Cake
For hundreds of years, king cake has primarily been associated with Catholics. For that reason, it’s surprising to find one of the tastiest versions of the Mardi Gras treat at an Israeli restaurant.
James Beard Award-winning Chef Alon Shaya moved to New Orleans in 2003. Twenty-two years later, Shaya has deep roots in this city he loves. He has raised his family here and opened multiple successful restaurants.
“I love New Orleans and its traditions,” he said. “Mardi Gras is such a special time of the year, and king cake is a big part of that.”
Shaya said he wanted to offer a version of king cake on the menu at his restaurant, Saba, but there were already so many traditional king cakes.
“I decided to make a king cake that merges my adopted home with those of where I was born,” he said. The result is a babka king cake, based on the sweet, braided bread that originated in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. Saba’s version is beautiful and layered, topped with cinnamon streusel and drizzled with salted caramel.
Rock-n-Sake’s Sushi King Cake
There’s only one place in the world where a sushi king cake can exist, and it had to be New Orleans. Co-owner and Executive Chef Dirk Dantin of Rock-n-Sake said he woke up one morning and had the idea.
“I’m from Louisiana, and I’ve grown up with king cake,” he said. “I also own a Japanese restaurant and love sushi. I just had to figure out how to make a sushi king cake work.”
Dantin’s biggest challenge was getting the rice base to hold together in a curvilinear shape. The solution was a traditional Japanese technique called hakozushi, or box sushi. In this method, Dantin presses his layers of rice, cream cheese, snow crab salad, and more rice into shape with a box-like mold. He then uses his hands to gently curve the edge into the traditional king cake ring.
To emulate the colorful look of a king cake, Dantin tops the pressed creation with alternating sections of fish – tuna, salmon, yellow tail, and spicy tuna are just a few of dozens of options available – and then garnishes the “cake” with lime, jalapeno, lemon zest, or green onions.
Rock-n-Sake sells hundreds of their $100 sushi king cakes each Carnival season. Because of the popularity of the creation, and how time-intensive it is to create, orders must be placed ahead of time via their website.
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