Today’s post is the next in our series of Blog With Friends themed collaborations. Each month a group of bloggers get together and each publish a project based on a theme. What I love about his partnership is that it's not bloggers with similar interests or strengths but a diverse group coming up with a variety of posts. In any given month we may a recipe, sewing tutorial, crocheting, crafts project, book review, and/or technology post all related to the theme of the month.
This month's theme is Mardi Gras.
There will be individual project pictures and links to what everyone else has to offer at the end of my post, but here's a peek at what we all came up with:
Nutella King Cake
I think Mardi Gras may be my spirit animal. Name a day Fat Tuesday, celebrate it by eating rich, fattening foods with reckless abandon, observe it publicly with parades and costume balls and parties and dancing in the streets? Sign me up.
King Cake reigns supreme for Mardi Gras. It's basically a filled, baked dough that is baked or fried, topped with a glaze and decorated with gold, green and purple colored sugars. A little plastic toy "baby" is baked into the cake and whoever gets that toy in their slice is supposed to be lucky. To me, skipping a trip to the dentist is lucky so I'm going to leave the it out.
And that's not the only way I'm breaking with tradition. If you know me, you know that yeast and I are mortal enemies. I say "do what you're supposed to do" and it says "not a chance." So I'm making my King Cake starting with a frozen dough. My version is basically a giant braided glazed cinnamon roll. Works for me, hope it does for you.
I start by defrosting a 1# frozen bread loaf, which I cut in half. I make my filling.
Then roll out each piece of dough separately and slather them with my filling.
I roll them up,
entwine them and allow to rise.
Then bake.
While baking, I make the glaze.
Cool the Nutella King Cake slightly, drizzle with the glaze and sprinkle with the colored sugars.
Laissez les bon temps rouler!
King Cake reigns supreme for Mardi Gras. It's basically a filled, baked dough that is baked or fried, topped with a glaze and decorated with gold, green and purple colored sugars. A little plastic toy "baby" is baked into the cake and whoever gets that toy in their slice is supposed to be lucky. To me, skipping a trip to the dentist is lucky so I'm going to leave the it out.
And that's not the only way I'm breaking with tradition. If you know me, you know that yeast and I are mortal enemies. I say "do what you're supposed to do" and it says "not a chance." So I'm making my King Cake starting with a frozen dough. My version is basically a giant braided glazed cinnamon roll. Works for me, hope it does for you.
I start by defrosting a 1# frozen bread loaf, which I cut in half. I make my filling.
Then roll out each piece of dough separately and slather them with my filling.
I roll them up,
entwine them and allow to rise.
Then bake.
While baking, I make the glaze.
Laissez les bon temps rouler!
As always, any time you make one of my recipes, feel free to post a picture of it to my Baking In A Tornado Facebook Page. I'd love to see it!
Be sure to visit all of this month's other Blog With Friends projects:

Kia of The Ground Beneath My Feet shares Let the Good Times Roll!

Lydia of Cluttered Genius shares Carnival in the Spanish Classroom.

P.J. of A 'lil HooHaa shares Masks and Beads and Food and Drinks, OH MY!

Melissa of My Heartfelt Sentiments shares Jazz it Up!

Jules of The Bergham Chronicles shares Find the Baby.
Nutella King Cake
©www.BakingInATornado.com
Printable RecipeIngredients:
1 loaf (1#) frozen bread dough
3/4 stick butter, softened
1/3 cup Nutella
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
purple, green and yellow or gold colored sugars
Directions:
*Encase the dough tightly in greased plastic wrap and defrost in the refrigerator. You can do this overnight.
*Grease a baking sheet and the bottom and sides of a clean metal can. Mix together the butter, nutella, brown sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.
*Unroll the dough and cut in half. Flour your counter and rolling pin. Roll each half out separately between pieces of wax paper to about 18 inches long by 7 inches wide.
*Carefully spread the Nutella mixture onto each sheet of dough, leaving about 1/2 inch on the long sides. Roll each up tightly.
*Entwine the 2 dough ropes together and move to the baking sheet. Form them into a circle and pinch the ends into each other to hold. Place the greased can in the center and allow to sit for 2 hours.
*Fully line the lower shelf of your oven with tin foil as the cake may leak while baking and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
*Bake for 20 minutes, remove from oven and allow to sit for 5 minutes. Carefully slide the cake onto a platter and remove the can.
*Mix together the powdered sugar, vanilla and about 4 tsp water until your topping is of drizzling consistency. Drizzle over the warm cake. Sprinkle the purple colored sugar in one section, then the green, then the gold and repeat so the bread has 6 sections of colored sugar, two of each.
Everything is better with Nutella! I make a braided Nutella bread every May for a Eurovision Party that I host annually. But this has some techniques that make me want to up my game. Most tempting is the technique of layering! Great idea. Thanks for always delivering great content.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, let me know if you try this bread, I'd love to hear what you think.
DeleteI am in your spirit animal pack!
ReplyDeleteWelcome!!
DeleteBeing raised Southern Baptist, you should be able to imagine that I know next to nothing of the traditions of Mardi Gras. In fact I had never heard of King Cake until last year. My Mardi Gras education is sadly lacking. I certainly love cake though and yours sounds good.
ReplyDeleteThanks Donna, if you were here, I'd share.
DeleteI'm not much into Nutella, but it looks solid. The overall cake sounds good, but my blood sugars are going bonkers just looking at those photos!
ReplyDeleteYeah, nothing sugar free about this one.
DeleteI love Nutella- what I don’t like, in general, are yeast cakes, cinnamon rolls or yeast donuts-go figure! One of our local supermarkets used to sell King cakes but haven’t for years. Alana ramblinwitham.blogspot.com
DeleteI don't think I've ever seen a King Cake in a grocery store. If I did, I'd be tempted to try it.
DeleteOur HEB's in Texas sell the king cakes. They're not bad but not quite as good as the one's from Louisiana
DeleteI bet some of the best ones are those from Louisiana. The fun thing about making them yourself is that you can play with flavors.
DeleteNutella is yum according to my daughter and grandson
ReplyDeleteThey're right.
DeleteI miss being able to eat Nutella. Looks tasty.
ReplyDeleteDawn aka Spatulas On Parade
Don't you have a nutella substitute that you use?
DeleteWhoever gets the baby has to bring the next king cake! One friend used to work with a guy who would always wait until the baby had been found before coming out of his office to get a slice. They tricked him one time, and he ended up with that slice and refused to bring the next cake. To say no one liked him was an understatement.
ReplyDeleteWow, what a party pooper. I don't like him and I don't even know him.
Delete