Monday, January 23, 2012

Mardi Gras Mambo: King Cake Edition

Yay! It's beginning to look a lot like my favorite time of year...Mardi Gras! Today at work my boss brought in a king cake, and I got so excited. I didn't even realize how close Mardi Gras is. Besides the parades and the partying, king cake is one of my favorite parts of the Fat Tuesday celebration. So, I have decided to dedicate this blog post to the history of king cake.
The term king cake is named after the three kings from the bible. The three colors of the sugar also represent something. Purple stands for justice, green for faith, and gold for power. The plastic baby represents baby Jesus. When my grandma was young,  they had king cake parties, and whoever got the baby in their piece had to have the next party and buy the next cake. Now a days, this isn't taken as seriously, but some families still participate in this. Before that, crews of parades would play a different game with king cakes. Who ever got the baby in their piece was the queen of that parade. Today, that definitely isn't the case, but I think it'd be fun if it was!

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