The King of Cakes for Mardi Gras

I have to admit I have never been that interested in Mardi Gras.  It has always seemed like a made up excuse to drink way too much and behave badly.  Imagine my surprised when 18 pages into this month’s Saveur magazine I learned that Mardi Gras is really a celebration of of the Epiphany (the wise men’s discovery of Jesus).    Of course the article really didn’t expound on what the Epiphany has to do with consuming vast amount of Hurricanes and yelling for beads on Bourbon Street, so we will have to make our own speculations how we got from a pinnacle Christian event to the modern day Mardi Gras celebration.

Anyway, the article got me thinking about King Cake, the popular custom of baking a cake in honor of the three wise men.  This cake is traditionally a sweetened yeast bread (similar to a danish) stuffed with cream cheese and a tiny plastic baby then sprinkled with garishly colored cinnamon and sugar or drizzled with icinng.  The bright colors are not just because they match LSU and Tulane colors but rather that to represent justice (purple), faith (green) and power (gold).

For the past 2 years a dear sweet co-worker of mine has ordered a King Cake and had it shipped to our office to celebrate Mardi Gras.  It is such a sweet gesture, but truthfully the cake from the mail order company is not very good.  It taste a lot like the cellophane-wrapped sticky buns you get in a vending machine and convenience stores.  

I got to thinking there has got to be an easy short cut route for making a King Cake when you don’t live near the bakeries that make them fresh.  I came up with the below semi-homemade recipe.  It is not only simple it tastes really good.    So the only thing you may need to order in advance is the little plastic baby that is typically inserted in a King Cake (lucky recipient of the baby in their piece of cake wins the honor of providing the King Cake at next’s event).  

I started my recipe with three cans of 8 count uncooked cinnamon rolls.  The beauty of using these prefab cinnamon rolls is they are tasty, super easy and that each can comes with a little icing cup.  Three cans = three icing cups, which happens to be the exact number of colors of icing you need for King Cake.  I used gel food coloring get the really vibrant Mardi Gras colors.  The only other thing you need to add is the cream cheese filling.  I made the whole cake start to finish in under 45 minutes and that was with a toddler trying to “help” me cook.  Give it a try and let me know what you think.

King Cake

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 25 minutes

• 3 cans of uncooked cinnamon rolls
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 (8 oz) packaging of cream cheese, room temperature
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• a dash of vanilla
• gel food coloring

Preheat oven to 400°.

Place cream cheese in a bowl.  Add sugar and a dash of vanilla.  Use a hand mixer to cream together the mixture and set aside until ready to add to cake.

Pop open the cinnamon rolls and set icing cups aside.  Use and rolling pin to roll each cinnamon roll out into an oval shape and about 1/4 inch thick.

Place two of the ovals over lapping end to end.  Brush the dough with the beaten egg where they over lap and roll again until 1/8 of an inch thick.

Place the pieces in an over lapping circle.  Brush the places where they overlap with egg and press together.

Spoon the cream cheese mixture in a ring around the center.  Fold the end of the dough back over the cream cheese.  Brush the place where dough over laps with egg and press together.

Bake for 25-27 minutes.  Check the cake after 15 minutes if it is starting to get to brown, loosely lay a piece of tinfoil over the cake and continue backing.

While cake is baking mix gel food coloring into icing cups to achieve desired color saturation level.

After baking, cool the cake completed.  Drizzle with alternating colors of icing and serve. (You may need to microwave the icing a few seconds to get it to drizzle.)

Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's day offers an easy opportunity for another touch point with consumers. It is a great time to offer up simple semi-homemade recipes as children and fathers around the country enter the uncharted territory of the kitchen in an effort to make breakfast, dinner or treats for mom. Whether you are targeting consumers with email newsletters, a mailing, a splash page on your website, or other marketing vehicle, be sure to offer up some super simple quick ideas that even a cooking newbie can handle like Summer Garden Party Sugar Cookies . These delicious little cookies are perfect because dad can easily get the kids involved in cutting out the cookies, spreading the icing and decorating with fruit. Since dad starts with refrigerated cookie dough, as long as he can find a cookie sheet in the kitchen, he should be able to handle the task.

So remember, offering easy recipes are a great way to be a resource to your consumers throughout the year. And of course, don't forget to call your mom on this Mother's Day!

Mother's Little Helper - A Jar of Spagetti Sauce

The cover story for this month's issue of Saveur magazine is dedicated to the quest for the perfect Ragu sauce in Bologna, Italy. There are numerous recipes for delicious sounding, slow-cooked, authentic Italian Ragu dishes - most taking about 3 hours or more to prepare. The very thought of those rich and meaty sauces over fresh-made pasta is enough to make my mouth water in anticipation. While reading the article I started trying to mentally schedule a day when I could devote the 3 to 4 hours needed to make the perfect saucy pasta dish for friends and family to enjoy. After a few minutes of contemplation over the scheduling manipulations that would be required to free up the 4 hours of cooking time needed for my pasta feast, I was forced to admit scheduling defeat. (Scheduling is so hard when you are trying to do it all from Career Woman, to Family Manager to Domestic Goddess!) So maybe I will have to leave the creation of the perfect home-made pasta feast in the capable hands of one of the local Italian restaurants (at least for now), where my only time requirement will be the hour or so to sit and enjoy dinner.

There was another interesting shorter article in Saveur this month, titled "Mother's Little Helper". Deputy Editor, Dana Bowen, talked about her mother, a second generation Italian-American woman, and her surreptiticious use of Ragu-brand pasta sauce as a basis for her own legendary "homemade" Italian sauces. Dana even mentioned that if family and friends were coming over for dinner her mother took great care to throw the store bought sauce jars away in the outside trash cans so that no one would spot the confederates to a true "homemade" meal in the kitchen trash. I wonder if Dana realizes that while her mother was bring old world traditions over to America she was also modifying those traditions to work in an increasingly fast pace society. Her mom's creative uses for store bought pasta sauces as a basis for her own variety of Italian dishes made her an early adopter of the semi-homemade cooking trend which is all the rage in American kitchens today.

Today's cooks are more sophisticated in their tastes but less proficient in their cooking skills than past generations. What they want is slow cooked authentic deliciousness when they dine out and simple dinner solutions that taste homemade for busy meals at home. If you want to appeal to the masses, simple recipes using pre-made ingredients that generate healthy interesting meals in a hurry are just the ticket. Be sure to mix it up with an interesting selection of ethnic dishes as well as simple versions of familiar classics for the broadest reach on usage occasions and the widest appeal to consumers.

Making it Simple

I opened up the April issue of Gourmet magazine and was intrigued by the picture of the Asparagus Ravioli in Parmesan Broth. The soup looked delicious and fresh and matched my desire to find to new recipes that could use the fresh asparagus which are just coming into season. So I flipped to the back to see how to make it. Of course this is Gourmet magazine so the first thing it called for was making fresh pasta dough followed by making fresh chicken stock infused with a Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese rind and then making your own ravioli using, of course, a pasta machine to roll out the dough. OK that sounds absolutely wonderful except for the fact I do not have 2 1/2 hours to make a first course for dinner tonight. So I got to thinking about what I could do to make this delicious sounding soup in an abbreviated version. Below is the recipe I came up with. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

Ravioli and Asparagus Soup
(Makes 4 first course soup servings in about 20 minutes)

1/2 lbs asparagus (roughly half a bunch)

1 9-oz package fresh refrigerated cheese ravioli

64-oz chicken stock (can substitute vegetable stock if desired)

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Cracked black pepper

*Pour chicken stock into a medium to large pot and place on high heat.

*Rinse asparagus. Cut off the bottom portion of the stalks (roughly the bottom 1/3 of the stalks ) and discard. Cut the top portion of the stalk into 2 inch pieces. Set aside until ready to use.

*Once the stock comes to a medium boil reduce heat to medium. Add ravioli and cook according to package directions (roughly 7 minutes).

*When the pasta has 2 minutes left to cook, add cut asparagus pieces to the pot and slowly sprinkle in the Parmesan cheese. Stir well and continue cooking remaining 2 minutes. Season soup with cracked black pepper to taste.

*Ladle into bowls and serve hot.

Voila you have taste fresh homemade soup in minutes - not hours!

Now please do not mistake my recipe makeover as a slight to Gourmet Magazine. My recipe is really more of a tribute to the great work the creative culinary team does over there. The magazine does an outstanding job of delivering deliciously gourmet recipes for me to drool over. Every month it inspires me to try to new flavor combinations and to step out of my familiar cooking patterns to try new things. However, the truly hot on-trend wave in cooking in the average American home right now is semi-homemade cooking. Recipes that use a little creative substitution of pre-made ingredients to make a nearly gourmet version of a meal that mom can bring to her family's dinner table any night of the week. While the true die-hard cooks will happily do scratch-cooking most of us don't have time to do it, at least not on a regular basis. So if you are putting together a collection of recipes for middle America rather than chef and gourmet cook type people, remember to keep it simple, quick and help the consumer take timing saving short cuts whenever possible.