Don’t Call It Blasphemous

-
Days like yesterday are when I was nostalgic about my time at Wharton. When it was good; it was fantastic. Leslie would order a King Cake from New Orleans, and the rest of the floor would jovially wear beads. We had more of a concept of why Mardi Gras was so big. It was the end of Carnival season (from Epiphany to Ash Wednesday); it was the end of eating for winter and the start of preparing for Christendom’s holiest dogmatic day.

I miss the King Cake and the joy that it brings to those who know of the tradition and to those who are learning of it for the first time.

I looked online for recipes since I enjoy cooking, but found out that a King Cake is labor intensive since it’s a sweetbread. I’m not very good with yeast. So I dug deeper and found a solution for a quick, tasty King Cake for those without a ton of time.

Don’t Call It Blasphemous King Cake:

Miss New Orleans? Forgot to order a King Cake? Impatient with yeast? I have a fix for your King Cake needs. It’s not as steeped in tradition as King Cake from New Orleans, but it’s good when you wanna laissez les bons temps rouler!

King Cake:
½ a lemon’s zest
½ Tbsp ground nutmeg
½ Tbsp sugar
1 eight-roll package of cinnamon rolls with icing
1 plastic baby Jesus, bean, coin, gumdrop, etc. optional

Mardi Gras colored sugars:
6 Tbsp sugar
Food coloring to make yellow, green and purple sugars

Follow the instructions on the package of cinnamon rolls to pre-heat the oven. Zest half of lemon rind. Mix with nutmeg and sugar. Open package of cinnamon rolls and separate the rolls. Top each roll with lemon zest and nutmeg mixture. Knead the zest and nutmeg into the roll by folding the roll in on itself a few times. (Note: if you would like to add a plastic baby Jesus, bean, coin, gumdrop, etc. in your King Cake, now is the time to embed it in one of the rolls before baking.) Place the rolls in a ring on the baking sheet on in the baking pan. Bake according to the package’s directions.

Split the sugar for the Mardi Gras colored sugar equally into three small bowl. Add one to two drops of color (a little goes a long way) and mix until the sugar is brightly colored.

After baking, spread the icing over your cake and let the heat of the rolls make it more pliable. After covering the cake with the icing, sprinkle the colored sugars over the cake in discernable strips of yellow, green and purple. Let the cake cool.

Share with family and friends.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The day we lost Pluto

-
or (And your little dog, Goofy, too!) It’s official, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), founded in 1919, has defined (I never had that much time in my life to define something -- most of my identify and define tests were given in the time frame of 40 minutes, slackers.) what a planet is: A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. According to this definition, Pluto has been demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet. A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite. Pluto is a dwarf planet by the above definition and is ...
Read more

Isaac

-
On "Confessions on a Dance Floor," there's a song Isaac , which I have fallen in love with. There's a great Yemenite chant intermingled in the song, which is translated into "if all of the doors of all of the generous peoples' homes are closed to you, the gates of heaven will always be open." Of course, it's controversial. Some rabbis has called her blasphemous (Madonna blasphemous?) since they believed the song to be about a 15th century Kabbalist, Isaac Lurier. It is forbidden to invoke his name in order to make a profit. Madonna's response is that she named the song after the cantor, Yitzhak (Isaac in English) Sinwani, for lack of a better name. (Seriously, who cares, Madge is R.C. and she's known for blasphemy. Didn't she really give JPII a heartattack that finally did him in in April?) Madonna's lyrics are: Staring up into the heavens In this hell that binds your hands Will you sacrifice your comfort Make your way in a foreign la...
Read more

Braciole

-
While I had time off during the Christmas break, I spent it working on a braciole recipe for the slow cooker.   In Italian American cuisine, braciole (the word is commonly pronounced /ˌbrä-zhəl/ from the Sicilian dialect) is the name given to thin slices of meat, usually beef, that are prepared as a roulade, a meat slice rolled around a filling then browned and braised. When I first had braciole, they were small individual servings, like the German Rouladen.  However in my search for a slow cooker version, I discovered recipes that made a large roulade versus the individual portions.  If Giada can do it, then so can I. The effort that goes into crafting the individual braciole is intense. Therefore, I was excited that most of the recipes called for a big roast sized braciole.  Cutting down the directions to a comfortable level of simplicity makes for a delicious meal without the hours of toil and let's the cook enjoy the food. I played with these two recipes, Bo...
Read more