AILSA CHANG, HOST:
If you consider yourself a baker and you celebrate Mardi Gras, making a king cake is a rite of passage. Aubri Juhasz of member station WWNO in New Orleans joined culinary students for their very first attempts.
AUBRI JUHASZ, BYLINE: It’s a Saturday in January, and students at New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute are setting up for a four-hour class, hauling stand mixers to their workstations.
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JUHASZ: Denae Reddick teaches this king cake workshop.
DENAE REDDICK: But it is sacrilegious to eat it outside of Carnival season, for sure.
JUHASZ: Fortunately, it is Carnival season, which runs from Epiphany on January 6 until Fat Tuesday. If you don’t know anything about king cake, it’s typically made with a rich, sweet, yeast dough. Think babka or cinnamon rolls. And the cake is ring-shaped. I ask Reddick where people typically go wrong.
REDDICK: I think in the dough-making process. I think the shaping, it can be tricky, but I think at the end of the day, it’s all going to kind of bake together anyway.
JUHASZ: Some of the people in today’s class already work in the restaurant industry, but their baking experience is limited, like Sierra Francois.
SIERRA FRANCOIS: I think we all, like, love king cake, maybe. And we know how important it is to the culture and so we want to do it justice.
JUHASZ: And they aren’t afraid to experiment. To her classic cinnamon filling, Francois adds coffee liquor and bourbon. Her classmate Orion Cho adds a few teaspoons of orange liquor.
ORION CHO: It’s a little sweet, very orange forward.
JUHASZ: After they finish their fillings, Chef Denae waves them over.
REDDICK: All right, y’all can come up here.
JUHASZ: She dumps the sticky dough onto a table and flattens it into a rectangle.
REDDICK: For the most part, stretch it by hand. Roll it just a little bit to get it to the shape and size you need it to be.
JUHASZ: The students follow Chef Denae’s instructions. Once Francois hits the right dimensions, she spreads her filling.
FRANCOIS: So I’m just making sure it gets everywhere. Trying to be like Chef Denae, even though they told us Chef Denae (laughter) is a perfectionist.
JUHASZ: From there, she folds the dough in half the long way, cuts it into three strands and braids it. Then she connects the ends to form a circle. They let the cakes rest. When they’ve nearly doubled in size, into the oven they go.
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REDDICK: I’m going to probably set mine at, like, 15 and check it.
JUHASZ: In the meantime, students whisk together a quick glaze – powdered sugar, milk, vanilla, salt and a little melted butter to help it set.
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JUHASZ: Time to check the cakes.
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UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: Oh, my goodness.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: They’re so beautiful.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: They’re so beautiful.
JUHASZ: They’re puffed up and golden brown, ready for glaze and colored sugar. With one under her belt, Cho says she sees more king cakes in her future.
CHO: Hopefully, I get to experiment with other flavors and combinations and break molds of what a king cake could be (laughter).
JUHASZ: Everyone’s so proud, no one wants to cut their creations. That’s right – after all of that, I didn’t even get a taste. But there’s no way they weren’t delicious. For NPR News, I’m Aubri Juhasz in New Orleans.
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