Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel Bomb. Here, we humans mark our holidays with glee, cheer, and often mouth watering desserts. Enter the New Orleans kincake, the frosted coffee cake like sweet roll typically eaten between January six and Fat Tuesday, which is the day before Lent begins. It's a staple of
the Mardi Grass season. For those unfamiliar with this festive dessert, the New Orleans version is often made of rich Danish style dough, braided and shaped into a large ring, and often with one or a variety of fillings I think cinnamon, sugar, chocolate,
raspberry preserves, chopped sugar cons or sweetened cream cheese. It's usually covered in a sweet glaze or frosting and decorated with gold, green, and purple sugar or icing, and of course, hidden somewhere within the tender layers of this frosted treat is a small plastic baby which sounds real beard if you're unfamiliar. So let's back up a little, because the origins of kincake go way back, and yes, there are
kings involved. Kincake derives from the holiday three Kings Day, also called Epiphany, which is a Christian feast day celebrated on January six, which is the day after the twelfth Day of Christmas. This holiday celebrates the biblical tale of the Three Kings a k a. The Three Wise Men or magi visiting the baby Jesus. It kicks off the mardy Gras or carnival season, which lasts until the first day of Lent, which is a moving holiday that falls
forty days before Easter. Anyway, the Three Kings are why kincakes are a seasonal treat in the shape of a crown or a more or less circular band anyway, those three colors they're decorated with are symbolic purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power, and tradition holds that the plastic baby in the cake represents Jesus. Just as Jesus showed himself to the Three Wise Men, he
will show himself to those enjoying kincake. Whoever finds the baby in their slices crowned king or queen for a day, or hosts the next Mardy Grass celebration, or at least buys the cake next year. It's a lucky token other tokens, coins, peas pecans, beans were what was up in the past and may still show up. Hundreds of thousands of kincakes are sold out of New Orleans every Mardy Grass season.
I couldn't track down a firm total, but the big commercial bakeries ramp up to producing three thousand, five hundred kincakes per day at their busiest. The Danish style dough is the most popular, but it's not the only kind. Either flakier or fluffier dough can sometimes be found, and New Orleans isn't the only place to serve kincakes by far. In northern France you can find gallette de roy, a
flaky puff pastry with sweet almond filling. Bulgaria and Greece have similar dishes traditionally served around the New Year, but the doing No Orleans kincake is closer to the ghetau de roi from southern France made with brioche, and the rosca de rays from Spain, a ing of sweetbread topped with icing and candied fruit, which makes sense given the Spanish and Southern French settlers and colonists who got the city started in the seventeen hundreds. But Mardi Gras and
other carnival celebrations have roots that go way back. People have been celebrating the end of winter and the return of longer, warmer days uh forever since the first brave human who dared to celebrate Ancient Babylonia may have held the first carnival circa two thousand, six hundred BC. This was a festival that celebrated in mirth and change through
satire by making a show of role reversals. There would be a parade through the streets, a pair of peasants would be royalty for the day, and royalty would act like fools. Pranks were played, Folks would wear costumes depicting social classes other than their own, and everyone partied. Sounded little familiar. These traditions were incorporated into and or disseminated through Grecian and Roman cultural traditions. The first kingcakes may
go all the way back to ancient Rome. As part of the Libration of Saturnalia, a winter solstice and harvest festival, a pastry would be baked with a fava bean hidden inside, and the finder would be named King for the day. The tradition became a part of Epiphany celebrations in the Middle Ages, the fava bean was sometimes replaced by a porcelain token of a crowned head to take some of
the pagan out of it. When Spain France spread their outposts to the America's, the king cake tradition came with them and took on a life of its own, particularly in New Orleans. The baby trinket didn't come along until a bakery called Mackenzie's came up with the idea in the nineteen fifties. At first, these figures were made out of porcelain and baked inside the cake, but were eventually replaced with plastic, which comes alongside the cake, due to
you know, concerns about baking plastic. These early cakes were more brioche like or pendus like and didn't have filling. That didn't come around until the nineteen eighties, as bakers began adding more eggs and sugar to their recipes or straight up switching to Danish pastry recipes, and anecdotal tail puts the first commercial filled kincakes in New Orleans to nine eight three. According to baker Joan Seaman. That year
her bakery baked four filled cakes. Her husband took one to work, and they got twenty five calls about filled cakes within thirty minutes. Through the nineteen eighties and nineties, Cajun and Creole food became national trends, and shipping technology
improved as well, allowing for more or less affordable overnight shipping. Then, in two thousand four, the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina honed New Orleans sense of community history and pride, and both local and national hunger for these traditional dishes, which means that celebrants have a veritable glut of kincake options today, miniature kingcakes, kincake doughnuts, kincake vodka, kincake bourbon milk punch, kincake smoothies, and, of course, in a city that loves
a party, a whole Kincake Festival held in late January. Today's episode was written by myself and Annie Reese, with a hat tip to House to Work writer Jeremy Glass. It was produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio. For more on this and lots of other curious topics, visit how stuff works dot com. And for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.