King Cake anyone?

Cake is a popular dessert. What wedding is complete without wedding cake? What birthday is complete without a cake and candles? Bakeries and grocery stores have ready-made cakes for us to buy. Cake mixes help us make our own cakes, or we can bake one from scratch. We often serve special cakes for holidays. There are layered cakes, pound cakes, bundt cakes, and more. When Marie Antoinette supposedly said, "Let them eat cake," she could have been talking about us! Y ou have probably seen many cakes in your lifetime but have you seen a king cake? It's not a king- sized cake. It's a cake served for the festivities of Carnival leading up to Mardi Gras. Carnival begins on January 6th, which is known as Three Kings Day, The Mighty Kings or the Feast of the Epiphany. It ends on Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday. It is always 46 days before Easter. It is a day of parades, parties, and king cakes. A traditional king cake is a sweetened yeast bread. The dough is braided and formed into a ring to look like a crown. After it has been baked, a sugar topping is poured over the cake, and it is sprinkled with purple, green, and gold sugar. Because people today love variety, king cakes are often made with many different fillings and flavorings. Chocolate, strawberry, blueberries and cream, and apple are just a few of the filling choices. Purple, green, and gold are the typical colors of Mardi Gras. Purple stands for justice, green stands for faith, and gold stands for power. The three colors appeared during New Orleans' Mardi Gras in 1872 on a carnival flag. The flag was designed for the visiting Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff of Russia. Now the colors appear on everything from beaded necklaces to king cakes! A fun king cake tradition involves hiding something inside the cake. It used to be a dried bean, pea, pecan, or a coin. The lucky person to find an object in his or her slice had good luck all year. Better yet, he or she was treated like a king or queen for the day! The custom changed around the 1930's. That is when a tiny doll baby took the place of the other objects. It would be slipped into a cake that had already been baked. Why a baby? According to tradition, the doll represents baby Jesus, found by the three kings on the night of the Epiphany. After the person who finds the doll or other object is treated like royalty, he or she has to provide the next king cake. In that way, the festivities are drawn out for a whole month Do you want to have your cake and eat it too? Then get the custom of king cake started in your circle of friends. Soon you'll be taking turns supplying cake for each party to follow!
Happy Mardi Gras! See you in class, teacher Silvia