This Week’s Obsession: Caramel Filled King Cake

Happy Mardi Gras, y’all!

If you’ve been following me on social media this carnival season, you’ll know that I’ve been trying to make a caramel filled king cake this year, and that my last attempt went up in flames.

Literally.

In the meantime, I’ve had the good fortune of flying out of town this past weekend to visit a dear friend of mine and meet her very first baby in all his royal cuteness. 

He was so cute I just wanted to squish him! 😍

Of course, I couldn’t show up empty handed for such an occasion, and I wanted to share a little bit of carnival season, so I made another round of salted caramel filled king cake. But this time, I baked it with the necessary fire precautions 🤦‍♀️

And thank goodness I did, because yet again, my beautiful salted caramel escaped out of every available opening whilst baking, even though I rolled the dough differently to house the caramel deep inside the folds of the dough before nestling it into the oven. The results were disappointing to say the least. 

Well… to an extent. It still tasted amazing even without the caramel filling, so I frosted and sugared the cake, wrapped it, and stuffed it into my carry-on luggage so I could keep an eye on it during my flights. (The stories of Duluth TSA vs. a king cake, and sitting on the tarmac at ORD for 40 mins of my 1 hr layover then sprinting through the airport from Concourse C to Concourse F whilst carrying said king cake are tales for another day. Luckily I made it on my flight with one whole minute to spare! And the cake was safe, too.)

Like this, but while carrying a cake.

As for my friends… they loved the king cake (sans caramel) and participated in a time honored tradition of cutting small slivers of the cake throughout the day until the cake eventually disappeared (read up on this tradition from my More King Cake post). They even made a suggestion for adding the caramel post baking, like you do when you fill a donut. While I have plenty of experience with that technique given my time running the pastry program at a gourmet hipster donut joint in New Orleans, I won’t test out that filling method in a king cake anytime soon because today is the last day for eating king cake and we all know that you can’t eat it outside of carnival season (and just a reminder, it starts at Epiphany - Jan. 6 aka Kings Day - and ends on Mardi Gras Day).

We're serious about the king cake eating time frame.

(This will be a project for next carnival season.)

Speaking of donuts, I noticed that the king cake was quickly dwindling away, so I asked my friends to bring me to their favorite local donut place so I could get my donut fix since Duluth doesn’t have any donut shops (Dunkin’ Donuts is trash and does not count, so don’t come at me with that nonsense 🚫🍩). As I shamelessly scarfed down a plateful of donuts, they politely made no comments about my eating habits 🐽 but questioned why I don’t just open a donut shop myself. It’s true that I have the culinary skills to do so, and that I minored in business administration in college so I should be able to run a business, but is now the time? Is Duluth the place? I realize that I’m asking these questions to the void but as always, thoughts and opinions are welcome.

Anyway, if you want to read more about the history of King Cakes, please read my original King Cake post from Jan. 2020. You can tell it was pre-COVID because I was all full of hope and joy 😄 And truthfully, we could all use something uplifting right about now, so enjoy!

Happy eating, y’all!

If you tried this dessert, or any other desserts in my blog, please share my Facebook or Instagram posts about them and let people know what you think! Mahalo!