The Side Dish: King Cakes, Ranked
Which king reigns supreme?
The great thing about cultural diffusion is that people in places like Austin get to celebrate and enjoy traditions and rituals from other regions and cultures, degrees of adjacency notwithstanding.
Twenty years ago, it seemed like you could only get king cake (New Orleans-style, not galette de roi or rosca de reyes) at Central Market. If you wanted an authentic king cake for your Texas-based Mardi Gras party, you’d have to order one from New Orleans. These days, though, perhaps because of the post-Katrina diaspora, dozens of grocery stores, bakeries, and restaurants get in on the king cake fun, offering cakes and slices to grab and go or order ahead. And because we are inclusive, here are gluten free king cakes, vegan king cakes, and savory king cakes.
In case you don’t know, New Orleans-style king cake is a braided, enriched sweet bread somewhere between a cinnamon roll and a brioche. A very good king cake is tender and soft (not dry! a dry king cake is a bad king cake!), has a cinnamon-sugar (or cream cheese or other flavors) filling, and a confectioner’s sugar glaze that is neither too thick and overpowering nor thin and runny. It’s adorned with purple, green, and yellow sanding sugar and, of course, contains a baby figurine (to represent the baby Jesus). It’s usually enjoyed between Epiphany (the twelfth night after Christmas) and Fat Tuesday, which marks the end of Carnival and the beginning of the Lenten season.
The king cake is not a high-minded work of pastry art. It’s comfort food. Its job is to hit those pleasure receptors and make you feel warm and fuzzy inside before those 40 grueling days of self-denial until Easter (if that’s how you roll). What I like in a king cake, you may not like in a king cake, and that’s okay.
To that end, here is my completely unscientific, utterly non-exhaustive exploration of some of the king cakes in Austin in 2024.
Central Market
$13.99
The one you take to the potluck because you’re too busy to pre-order one from a restaurant but you don’t want to look cheap.
Here’s a higher-brow grocery store king cake, still reasonably priced but not so cheap that you’re dubious about the quality. I was really hoping to get a chocolate king cake from Central Market, but they were sold out when I made my visit. There were cream cheese, strawberry cream cheese, and raspberry cream cheese options available; I went with raspberry because I’m fancy. The bread was relatively soft, the fruit lending some moisture, and I liked the filling, but the decorative sanding sugar was incredibly thick, lending the overall texture an unpleasant grittiness.
Easy Tiger
$26, about 16 slices; “prince cake,” serves one generously, $4.75
Goldilocks would approve.
Full disclosure: This rating is based on an individual-sized “prince cake,” because I was already up to my eyeballs in king cake and I didn’t want to drop another $30 on pastry. This individual-sized portion could really serve two; it’s a very generous hunk of pain au lait dough braided around a cinnamon-sugar filling. It was a little tough on the outside, but the inside was perfectly tender, with a good ratio of filling to bread. The full-sized version of the cake comes with a little tiger figurine in place of the baby, which is pretty cute.
H-E-B
$9, about 16 slices
Eh. It’ll do.
I dunno. Maybe I got a cake that was already a few days old. The (very, very) thick frosting cracked when I cut into the cake, which was a red flag. The cake was tough and hard to cut into, and the cream cheese filling had melted into the bread, leaving a hollow tunnel in the center. It tasted okay, but I had heard good things about H-E-B’s king cake, so this was a disappointment, to say the least.
That said, it’s $9. You get what you pay for. If it’s in the break room at work and you need a little pick me up, go ahead and cut yourself a slice. Just … lower your expectations.
Little Ola’s
$18, about 8 slices
Can a king cake be bougie?
I’m not sure this actually qualifies as a king cake. It’s a dense brioche flavored with lemon zest; the description says that it’s filled with a brown sugar spiced cream cheese, but my cake didn’t have any noticeable filling. It’s a nice-tasting brioche, though! The texture was nice for the first day; it was decidedly less nice on the second day after it had dried out a bit. This is a Junior League king cake, a conservative society lady. I mean, look at her! She’s wearing pearls!
Stuffed Cajun Meat Market
$42.99, about 16 slices
Is it possible to fall in love with a pastry?
I did not purchase this cake; my friend did and very generously shared a few slices with me. Reader, I adored this king cake. The bread was soft and tender, the softest of all the cakes I tried. The cream cheese filling was light and airy and tangy; some people might think it had too much filling, but I am not those people. The cream cheese icing was the perfect consistency, and in perfect proportion. This is the most expensive of all the king cakes I tried, but it is large and delicious and worth every penny.