On The Eleventh Day Of Christmas...

My true love gave to me...

Eleven pipers piping!

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So Twelfth Night is coming up, and I thought it would be fun to give it a nod. I like finding reasons to celebrate for any day. I figured I would make a King Cake.

Now, King Cakes are common down south towards New Orleans. They seem to usually be some sort of yeast sweet bread (think similar to a cinnamon roll wreath) with an almond type filling decorated with icing in purple, green and yellow. While the coloring is a Louisiana thing, the type of cake is also found in some of the European traditions.

Braided sweet roll type cake decorated with icing and colored sugar.

Other European traditions have cakes made puff pastry and an almond filling of some sort. Almond seems to be the big thing. Some cakes end up more like a spice cake or a light fruit cake.

The one common thing for all the cakes is to insert a coin, a bean, a pea, porcelain or plastic figurines, or a little plastic baby. Depending on what you get, and what country you are in, it can mean different things. You can be King and queen of the party, responsible for bringing next years cake, lucky for the coming year, obligated (privileged) to throw a party, wealthy in the coming year, or the drudge who has to clean things up (usually the bean accompanied by another trinket that makes its finder the King for the day).

This is one of the puff pastry kinds filled with an almond cream, common in France.

A more rustic, raised, sweet bread fruit cake blend. Likely to be something common in medieval times.

A fruit cake type of King Cake. Very colorful and usually much lighter than a regular fruit cake.

First decision I need to make is what sort if King Cake I want and what/if I want to put in as trinkets. I am heavily leaning towards a cinnamon roll type of cake, since I can get those in cans from the grocery store, ready to bake. I'd be more adventurous if I had counter space.

Next is what day to have it on. Twelfth night is celebrated on either January 5th, or the 6th. There is no universal agreement as to what to do. Maybe I will just celebrate with it for Epiphany, since there is a feast on that day too. That makes it for the 6th.

Decisions decisions.