Originally I had planned to make a nice tiered cake for The Princess and the Frog, both because I saw this gorgeous snow-globe cake which inspired me, and because I thought it would be a good idea to practice my stacking and icing technique. However, around March time I was reading Cake Wrecks and came across this post, which introduced my to the spectacle that is King Cake. I thought King Cake sounded fantastic, thought I could make much less of a wreck of it than this bakery (although mine did end up sort of resembling a giant croissant!?) and being a Mardi Gras dish it fit in nicely with the movie. So that's what I went with.
I used the recipe I found here - simply because it had the nicest looking photo I could find!
Prep time: around 2 hours 30 mins
Cook time: 40 mins
Makes 12-14 slices
Ingredients:
For the cake:
15g active dry yeast (about 2 sachets)
100g granulated sugar
235ml milk
115g butter
5 egg yolks
500g bread flour
pinch of salt
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of cinnamon
For the filling:
250g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
For the topping:
250g icing sugar
30ml lemon juice
15ml milk
90g granulated sugar
Purple, yellow and green food colouring.
- Warm up the milk in a large bowl, then stir in the yeast and sugar until dissolved. Leave to stand for around 10 minutes. Meanwhile melt the butter over a gentle heat. Once the milk and yeast mixture is creamy, stir in the egg yolks and the melted butter.
- Sift the flour, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon into a separate bowl to combine. Beat the milk/egg mixture into the flour mixture a little at a time until the dough pulls together.
- Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and supple. Place the dough into a large bowl and drizzle a little oil over it. Turn the dough over in the bowl to coat in the oil, then cover the bowl with a damp cloth and put in a warm place to rise for 2 hours.
- When the 2 hours is almost up, prepare the filling by whipping the cream cheese and icing sugar together until smooth and creamy. Grease and line a baking sheet and a clean, empty tin can.
- After 2 hours resting the dough should be almost doubled in size. Tip it out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out into a rectangle. Spread the filling over the centre of the dough then fold it so that the two long edges meet. Seal all of the edges then shape the dough into a long cylinder and place on the baking sheet seam side down (if you're going to include an inedible plastic baby, now's the time to push it into your dough!) Place the tin can in the centre of the sheet and form the dough into a ring around it. Cover the cake with the damp cloth and leave to rest in a warm place for a further 30 mins.
- Preheat the oven to gas mark 4. After 30 minutes the dough should have doubled in size again. Bake in the preheated oven for around 30 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly before remove the can from the centre of the cake. Leave to cool completely.
- Whilst cooling, prepare the topping; mix together the icing sugar, milk and lemon juice in a small bowl until well combined, and put to one side until ready to use. Put 30 grams of granulated sugar into each of three food bags, and add a drop of food colouring to each. Seal the bags and then, one at a time, rub the food colouring into the sugar until an even tone is reached.
- Once the cake has cooled completely spread the topping over it and allow it to drip down the sides. Sprinkle the coloured sugars onto the cake in alternating stripes. Cut into slices and serve with a cuppa! (And remember, whoever gets the baby has to make the next King Cake!)
Next time it's the 50th and final (so far) Disney Classic, Tangled, and I'll by making and baking two goodies to mark the occasion!
Happy Thoughts
x
