1 post tagged “king cake”
I am baking king cakes for tomorrow's Mardi Gras.
I love Mardi Gras. I love the idea of Mardi Gras.
It is a season of mirth and joy. People gather together to entertain one another with masks and trinkets and music and short skits. There's special, traditional food. It all culminates in a no-holds-barred feast with extravagances in color, costume, food, and community.
It's followed by days of contemplation and quiet, a gestating time, a waiting time, an observing time - as the rest of the world sprouts frantically into spring. How appropriate that we take this time to pause to see life renew itself all around us.
Mardi Gras, for me, is the first day of spring. The dandelions pop yellowly open. The wild violets send up blossom shoots. The plantains and other lawn "weeds" unfurl their leaves. The rose bushes cloak themselves in buds. The squirrels make a massive appearance, daring the cars and the migrating geese. The road repair crews begin to make real road repairs and not the stop-gap repairs of winter. Hot tar reeks the air as roofs are repaired. Building cranes swing back into use.
All of this begins at the end of Carnival, when Mardi Gras bursts across the cities in a riot of color and delicious excess.
We have no Mardi Gras parades in Oklahoma, no wild excess. Oklahoma is a very staid state. Any celebrations we have are subdued. Even Halloween generates only the expected costumes in public, and celebration is discouraged all across non-retail businesses. Office workers are expected to treat the day like any other day in the year. There's a small amount of defiance in the candy dishes and the colors office workers choose to wear.
Mardi Gras is the same way in Oklahoma - frowned upon as "too wild". Rebellion appears in a string of beads, in the candy dishes, in the King Cakes brought to work to share among co-workers.
It doesn't matter if Mardi Gras is the glorious excess of New Orleans or Brazil or the sneakiness of Oklahoma - it still calls to people to celebrate. And celebrate we do.
I do my part by baking King Cakes to share. Richly filled and decorated King Cakes. This year, I fill some with traditional pralines and others with a yoghurt-based cream cheese and honey and apples, spiced with cardamoms and white pepper, and still others with dense dark chocolate, toasted almonds, and the delicate aroma of roses and orange.
I love Mardi Gras.
