For bakeries in New Orleans, the first few months of the year are among the busiest. As the rest of the country stares down the barrel of January, the city is just easing into Carnival.

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For bakeries in New Orleans, the first few months of the year are among the busiest. As the rest of the country stares down the barrel of January, the city is just easing into Carnival. The weeks are marked by parties, by parades, and by pastry, most specifically king cake: a wreath-shaped confection made with a yeasted dough—the kind you’d use for brioche or sticky buns—and finished with white icing and a shower of crystallized sugar that’s dyed purple, green, and gold. King cake is rooted in religious tradition—it’s a Catholic custom that’s believed to have been adapted from an ancient Roman one—but in New Orleans it’s also a “huge economic boon,” one baker told Hannah Goldfield.
It’s considered sacrilege, even among the secular, to make or eat a king cake before or after Carnival. In the past decade or so, the season has become a frenzied pageant of baking innovation. “Even the larger king-cake bakeries are pushing the boundaries now,” the baker said. From king-cake lattes to king-cake bread pudding to king-cake-flavored rum, Hannah Goldfield reports on how the pastry is putting the ingenuity of New Orleans’s bakers on full display.

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