King Cake (Mardi Gras Style)

I have always wanted to try my hand at making a King cake, that purple, yellow and green colored sweet confection traditionally served during Mardi Gras, and this year was finally the year I managed to work it into my schedule. This recipe is a yeast dough, and is a little advanced because of the extra steps involved in using yeast, but it is not difficult. I will try to be as explicit as possible for those who have never baked with yeast before.

But first, how about a little background info on these colorful cakes?

In the title, I specify that this recipe is specifically for a Mardi Gras-style King Cake. I have to make this distinction, because there are actually many different types of King Cakes in many different cultures. Typically, these cakes are associated with the Epiphany, the 12th day after Christmas (aka Twelfth Night) when the 3 Wise men (aka the 3 Kings) finally arrived in Bethlehem to visit the Baby Jesus. The King Cake "season" extends from the Epiphany all the way until the day before Lent (Shrove Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday).

Tsoureki (Sweet Greek Easter Bread)

One of my most consistent childhood memories is of the tsoureki my Yia-Yia would always bring to my house at Easter. She would get it from the church, and I was always fascinated by the slightly sweet, almond topped bread with a blood-red egg stuffed into it. This year, I decided to try my hand at making my own. I have never made a yeast bread before, and every Easter when I see the tsoureki at the Greek store by my house, I think "I can do that" but I never actually try. So I decided that 2009 would be the year. Ignoring my family's dusty, obligatory "Joys of Greek Cooking" book, I located a recipe online that I liked the look of, from Evelyn/Athens at RecipeZaar.


For those who don't know, tsoureki is a braided Greek sweet bread, traditionally served at Easter. It has many equivalents in other cultures, including: corek (Turkey); panaret (Albanian); choreg (Armenian); and, more distantly, Challah. It is considered a "brioche-like" bread, meaning that it is tender and yet has a dark outer crust courtesy of an egg wash. Although it has the right amount of flour, it does not, however, contain enough butter to be truly considered a brioche bread. In Greece, tsoureki can also be known as lambropsomo, which is a derivative of the Greek name for Easter Sunday, and literally means "shining bread." The outer glossiness of the bread is considered an important symbol for the light of Christ, and the blood-red egg (kokkina avga) is also highly symbolic -- red for the blood of Christ, and egg as a symbol of renewal and rebirth. All of this, of course, went right over my head as a child. I just thought I was getting a yummy dessert!

The prospect of tsoureki-making was exciting to me because it was such a familiar part of my life (and yet I had no clue how to make it), because it was a yeast bread, and because it contained a few elements out of the common way.