New Orleans Easy Mardi Gras King Cake Recipe

A King Cake is a tradition cake for Mardi Gras time. Instead of having pizza parties, we had king cake parties at our schools. How it worked is a teacher would bring the first King Cake in for the season. Inside the cake is a little plastic baby. Whoever’s piece has the plastic baby (you will know when you have it because usually the head, butt, legs or arms is sticking out barely through one side of the sliced cake) has to throw the party the next week with a King Cake. Since I grew up eating so much King Cake when I moved away from Louisiana it was one of those things I missed most. For several years, I would either purchase a cake or a family member would send me one. The cost was outrageous – almost $50 to overnight just the cake – that doesn’t even count the cost of the cake. Therefore, I decided to learn how to make my own!

Ingredients:

- 1 – 16 oz can of pillsbury Grand’s biscuits (not the layered or flaky kind)
- 1/4 cup of melted butter (you will not use it all)
- 1/4 cup of sugar
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- Cream Cheese Frosting (will not use it all – use one frosting will last for 2 cakes)
- Sprinkles – Yellow, Green, Purple
- Plastic Baby if you have one!

Directions:

Preheat Oven to 325 Degrees.
Line cookie sheet with aluminum foil – makes for easy clean up!
Open the can of biscuits and lay them flat on the foil. Have biscuits close together and press them down flat into a large rectangle. Make sure there is no wholes and the dough is as sealed as possible. Put a layer of wax paper over the dough than take a wine bottle to press the dough down more! If you have a rolling pin you can use that as well!
Paint the biscuit dough with the melted butter (you will not use all the butter) – just needs to be enough to hold the cinnamon and sugar to the dough!
Now mix the cinnamon and sugar (if you don’t have cinnamon and sugar, you can use cinnamon sugar already mixed together).
Sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar over the butter evenly!
If you have a plastic baby, lay the baby in the dough.
Roll the dough up into a long cylinder as tightly as possible and seal the ends. Now, shape the cylinder into a round cake (like a big donut).
Bake for 30 minutes.
Let cool for 3 – 5 minutes. Flip cake off of the aluminum foil so it does not get stuck on it!
Spoon cream cheese frosting over the cake. Let the frosting fall along the sides. Take your sprinkles and sprinkle one color after another proportionally until you around the entire cake!