Dishin’ With Debbie Easy Mardi Gras King Cake

It's time for Mardi Gras or 'Fat Tuesday.' It's the traditional celebration the day before Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. We're all familiar with the parades, the throwing of colorful beads and the famous Mardi Gras King Cake. It is typically a pastry or coffee type cake decorated with the traditional green, purple and yellow colors. And, don't forget the baby!

So, I though we could use my family recipe for a delicious cinnamon swirl coffee cake. But, instead of my regular white powdered sugar glaze, let's use the green, purple and yellow glaze! This cake has been in my family as a Santa cake since I was a child. It came to my mom from a church friend. And, everyone I serve it to absolutely falls in love. But, it couldn't be easier.

This spin on a Mardi Gras King Cake starts with a box mix that we add a couple of things to spruce it up! It gets a touch more sugar, some oil, eggs and sour cream. Then it's baked into a bundt pan with a layer of cinnamon and brown sugar swirled throughout the center. And, we'll be adding the Mardi Gras baby. But wait until you see what we use to stand in for a traditional plastic baby!

So, we attempted to use a frozen Gummy Bear in place of a plastic baby. However, even frozen, the gummy bear melted. Therefore, I suggest putting it in after the cake has cooled. We place one in afterwards from the bottom of the cake. The picture below shows a little of the bear...the green part in the bottom of the slice. Not perfect...but, it was fun to experiment!

So, why the purple, green and yellow? Well, tradition says those colors represent justice in the purple, faith in the green and power in the gold. And, what's with the baby? The baker hides a small plastic baby. And, whoever gets the baby in their slice, must host the next gathering and make the Mardi Gras King Cake. Now, let's get started with this party!

Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday, originated as a festive holiday in mostly Roman Catholic locales. I love all the colors. The holiday falls the day before Ash Wednesday, a period of fast marking the beginning of Lent that leads up to Easter Sunday. It has, however, grown more secular and widely celebrated in New Orleans over time, now extending to a full week of indulgence, merriment, and feasting before the long period of fasting and stringency.

Besides the legendary parades and world-famous floats, Mardi Gras is famously a time for indulging in New Orleans’ favorite foods, a fabulous amalgamation of Cajun, Creole, French, Spanish, West African, and Indigenous cuisines. With Mardi Gras fast approaching, Stacker compiled a list of 10 classic New Orleans dishes you can make to celebrate using Allrecipes.com, Southern food scholarship, and New Orleans food blogs.

Maque choux is a vegetable side dish consisting of fresh corn, peppers, and onions braised in bacon fat. Thought to have Cajun, Indigenous, and Spanish influences, the original maque choux would have used seasonal vegetables grown in Louisiana’s gardens. This recipe also uses garlic and celery for additional flavor.

Perhaps the most quintessential Mardi Gras food, king cake is a flaky, bread-like pastry in the shape of a ring, decorated with green, gold, and purple, colors which represent faith, power, and justice, respectively. Check out this recipe for authentic New Orleans-style king cake, and don’t forget to hide a small baby figurine inside the cake—whoever finds the baby in their slice of the cake is the host of the following year’s celebration.

A classic Creole and Cajun dish, jambalaya consists of flavorful rice combined with smoky andouille sausage, seafood or meat (or both), vegetables, and spices. The rice is cooked in broth with the rest of the ingredients and becomes imbued with the spices and flavors of the dish. This recipe combines andouille sausage and chicken but is adaptable to adding other proteins like shrimp.

As much an excuse for New Orleanians to gather in their backyards as they are a culinary experience, crawfish boils are at the heart of social and food culture in the Crescent City. While boils are usually cooked outdoors in massive vats, this recipe is a slightly scaled-down version of the classic boil, which features a massive amount of crawfish, fresh corn, potatoes, sausage, and more, all boiled in the spicy broth. Best enjoyed in a sunny backyard.

The name “gumbo” originates from a West African word for okra. The dish is as cross-cultural in origin as Louisiana itself, with African American, Indigenous, and French influences. This recipe for classic Cajun chicken and sausage gumbo starts with a roux to thicken the soup.

Perhaps no New Orleans food is more famous than beignets and a steaming cup of café au lait from the legendary French Quarter institution Café du Monde. The crispy, hole-less doughnut is covered in a snow of powdered sugar and eaten warm. This recipe uses mostly pantry staples and is home-cook friendly.

Few dishes are more comforting than shrimp served over creamy grits. Though its precise origins remain mysterious, one food historian opines that the dish's birthplace was Mozambique. This recipe employs andouille sausage for smokiness and two types of cheese in the grits for maximum luxuriousness.

Red beans and rice represent a dish historically prepared on Mondays in New Orleans, the city’s laundry day. The dish’s lengthy cook time but relatively hands-off preparation was well suited to the all-day affair of washing and repurposing ham bones from Sunday night’s dinner. Today, red beans and rice are enjoyed throughout the week. This recipe benefits from slow preparation, as well as spending 24 hours in the fridge so the flavors can continue to develop.

Po’ boys, or “poor boy sandwiches,” originated during the 1929 New Orleans streetcar strike as a nourishing and cheap meal for striking laborers. The sandwich served on french bread with remoulade sauce and some kind of deep-fried protein persists in popularity in the city today. This recipe uses catfish, but substitutions of shrimp, oysters, or even fried chicken are not uncommon.

Étouffée comes from the French verb “to smother.” Crawfish, Louisiana’s favorite tiny, prehistoric crustacean, is smothered in a buttery roux and melded with Creole spices, but this recipe allows for shrimp to be used in place of crawfish if they’re not in season, or if crawfish aren’t available.