Some things just sound better in French.
Mardi Gras sounds better than Fat Tuesday and laissez les bon temps rouler sounds better than let the good times roll.
Mardi Gras is the last day of Carnival, which is a festival celebrated in over 50 countries around the world and it can last anywhere from a week to about a month.
The word Carnival comes from Latin carne, meaning meat, and vale, meaning leave aside. Carnival leads up to that one decadent day, Fat Tuesday, when we try to get rid of all our meats and tempting, sugary foods, preparing us for the lean times that, at least in the northern hemisphere, lead us out of the dark winter and into spring. To some, this occasion marks the day before Ash Wednesday which is the beginning of the Christian liturgical season of Lent, the 40 days of fasting leading up to Easter.
Although we use the French term mardi gras, the celebration does not have French roots. The French flair is due to two French explorers, brothers Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. In 1699, they reached the mouth of the Mississippi River near Louisiana on Shrove Tuesday and named it Pointe du Mardi Gras. There, they established Fort Louis de la Mobile, now modern-day Mobile, Alabama, and it was there that they hosted the first Mardi Gras celebration on American soil in 1703. When de Bienville established Nouvelle Orleans in 1788, Mardi Gras celebrations began in Louisiana and Fat Tuesday was declared an official holiday in that state in 1875.
However, if the French didn’t come up with the first idea of this springtime festival, who did?
The ancient Romans.
The ancient Roman calendar year began in March (then known as Martius, after Mars, the god of war) with springtime, and ended in December with harvest time. (January and February, as we know them, came later in their history.) The festivals celebrated by the Romans that most coincided with our current Christmas and our Carnival/Mardi Gras celebrations were Saturnalia and Lupercalia.
Saturnalia, held in mid-December near the winter solstice, was an ancient Roman festival honoring the agricultural god Saturn. Saturnalia celebrations are the source of many of the traditions we now associate with Christmas, such as wreaths, candles, feasting and gift-giving.
Lupercalia was an ancient festival held each year in Rome around February 14. It was a bloody, violent and rather passionately charged celebration awash with animal sacrifice, all in the hopes of warding off evil spirits and ensuring a fecund season of growth.
Fortunately, the traditions have slowly changed and evolved into what we know today as Carnival and Mardi Gras.
In the United States, we have New Orleans as our most notable Carnival. The whole city goes wild, but the festival is concentrated in the French Quarter with parades and elaborate floats, marching bands, dancing, eating, and more than a fair amount of drinking.
The colors of Mardi Gras are purple (for faith), green (for justice), and gold (for power). And those colors are everywhere and on everything. Literally. Knowing what they symbolize makes them more palatable when combined and plastered everywhere beginning on January 6 (the Christian feast day of Epiphany, which signals the end of the Christmas season and when the wise men/three kings arrived in Bethlehem) and continuing through to Fat Tuesday. This year, Fat Tuesday is February 13.
One popular, and delicious, tradition of the Mardi Gras celebration is the King Cake. This is a sweet yeast bread type cake, a little like a Challah, and guess what colors it’s covered in? Inside you’ll find raisins, maybe a little citrus peel, cinnamon, sugar, cream cheese and a little plastic baby – that’s the king part of the cake. Whoever finds the king in their serving brings the cake, and the party, next year.
Our party has nothing on Rio de Janeiro in Brazil—the biggest and most famous Carnival on the planet. Up to 2 million people attend every year. It’s an industry (and possibly a galaxy) all unto itself. Parade floats, costumes, dancers and choreographers, music, food, all to unfathomable excess. One can only wonder if the 40 days of Lent that follow Carnival are spent cleaning it all up, as penance.
In the United Kingdom, Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras is called Shrove Tuesday (shrove meaning reconciliation, and, to free from guilt). There, it’s customary to eat pancakes before giving up the carbs for 40 days, including their sweet toppings and maybe the bacon or rashers that go with them.
Germans call this day Fasching and its roots go back to pre-Roman times when revelers would wear masks and make fun of their leaders. The masks, presumably, protected them from the leaders of the day who would punish and even kill them if they were recognized!
Nowadays, Mardi Gras is more family friendly with parades, parties, dances, costumes (reminiscent of the Middle Ages), and playful name calling and eating. Lots of eating. The idea is to eat all the things not allowed during the fast to follow, especially meat. One of my funny memories involves a favorite dish I remember my mother making during Lent that had meat in it. The dish is called Maultaschen, which is basically German ravioli filled with spinach or sometimes stinging nettles, onions and meat. Maultaschen is said to have come from a convent during the Middle Ages and, supposedly, the nuns stuffed meat into noodle pockets to hide the smell and keep it from rising to heaven! If you think about it, it’s not a bad idea.
The post-Mardi Gras season of abstinence can be, overall, a good idea. The holiday eating season is over and it’s time to purge the system, get clean and maybe lean. Forty days of fasting and reflection prepare us for the renewal that comes with spring, and for some of us, Passover and Easter. However you decide to celebrate this transition from darkness to light, winter to spring, excess to less, get ready to eat, drink, and be merry, for this year’s Mardi Gras falls on Tuesday, February 13. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
Below are the sources I enjoyed reading while compiling this article:
•www.nationaldaycalendar.com
•www.history.com
•www.ticketfairy.com
•www.army.mil
•www.walksofitaly.com
•www.nationalgeographic.com
•www.ncregister.com
When we went looking for a King Cake recipe, the headline “The Homemade King Cake Recipe with the One Weird Ingredient That’ll Knock Your Socks Off” caught our eye. We reached out to the blogger and asked if we could share their recipe with you. Many thanks to Joey Yearous, Ashley Angelico, and Elizabeth Schmelling at New Orleans Mom (neworleansmom.com) for the original recipe and photos!
COPYCAT NEW ORLEANS BAKERY-STYLE KING CAKE (Makes 2 authentic New Orleans King Cakes)
INGREDIENTS
For the Cake:
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup butter
3 cups milk
1 cup instant mashed potato flakes
1 tablespoon salt
4 eggs
2 packets instant yeast
7 cups all-purpose flour (plus more for dusting)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon lemon extract
¼ teaspoon orange extract
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon butter extract
For the Cinnamon Sugar Filling:
1/3 cup butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon
For the (Optional) Cream Cheese Filling:
½ cup powdered sugar
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
For the Icing:
3 tablespoons butter
4½ cups powdered sugar
½ cup milk, room temperature
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla OR almond extract (or ½ tsp of each)
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
For the (Optional) Decorations:
Purple, green & yellow colored sugar (I like to color my own sugar using gel food coloring — make a few cups of each color in case you want to make more king cakes later!)
Sprinkles
Plastic king cake baby
INSTRUCTIONS
To make the cake itself, HAVE ALL YOUR INGREDIENTS MEASURED AND READY TO GO!
The first step is scalding the milk. It’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds! Heat a saucepan over medium heat and add the milk. Cook until the edges begin to foam and froth, but do not allow it to boil. It only takes about 4 or 5 minutes, so watch it carefully. There will be a little layer like a “skin” across the top. (Appetizing, I know.)
Remove from heat. I like to pour it into a mixing bowl to prevent the rest of the ingredients from sticking to the hot saucepan and so it cools down faster. Add the sugar, butter, mashed potato flakes, and salt.
Stir thoroughly until the butter is completely melted and allow to cool to lukewarm. I use a candy thermometer to make sure it cools to about 115 degrees. Remember, if the mix is too warm, it may kill the yeast and your king cake won’t rise. Patience is key here!
In a small bowl, lightly beat the eggs with the extracts.
Add the yeast to the milk mixture, stir well. Then add in the egg mixture, stirring until it’s uniform.
Place the flour and cinnamon in the bowl of your standing mixer fitted with a dough hook.
Pour the milk mixture into the flour and mix on medium speed until the dough has come together, but is still soft. Sometimes I only use 6- 6½ cups of flour. (I start with 6 cups and have the last cup on the side, adding more as necessary.) This is not like bread dough, it is a much stickier dough. Be sure to scrape the bowl and mix again to incorporate all the flour.
Spray a large bowl with cooking spray and place your dough in the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a clean, dry towel. Set in a warm place and let your dough rise for one hour.
In the meantime, make the cinnamon filling: In a small bowl, mix sugar and cinnamon. Keep your butter separate.
If you are using cream cheese filling, make it now: Blend the softened cream cheese and the powdered sugar until creamy. Spoon it into a pastry bag or a Ziploc and set aside.
Once the dough has risen, push down and divide dough into 2 parts. Each portion will be a king cake — remember, this recipe makes 2 king cakes!
Divide each king cake portion into 3 parts (for the braid). If you’d rather do a twist than a braid, split each king cake portion into 2 parts.
Place dough onto lightly floured surface and roll out one portion at a time to ½” thickness and butter the surface of the dough with a bit of the softened butter. (I like to portion out my butter — I cut it into 6 equal parts for my 6 braid strips and spread each strip with a portion of butter.)
Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.
Roll up along the long side; pinch seam to seal. Stretch into a thick rope. Repeat with other dough parts.
Next, braid 3 strips of dough rope together. (You can probably find videos online that explain how to do this part better than I can!) Line up the three strips next to each other – starting with the left, cross over the middle strip. Next take the right strip and cross it over the middle strip (which was originally the left strip). Continue this pattern until you get to the end.
When you get to the end, transfer each king cake braid to its own parchment paper lined baking sheet and form the braid into an oval. Pinch all ends together – I try to shape it so that the oval is one solid braid.
If you’d like to color your king cake prior to baking, now’s the time to sprinkle it with your purple, green, and yellow colored sugars in alternating sections. (We will frost over this with white icing afterwards, so feel free to skip this step.)
If using cream cheese (or another type of) filling, pipe it into the recesses of the braid.
Cover the king cakes with saran wrap or a clean, dry towel and allow to rise in a warm place for an hour or until doubled in size.
Bake at 350 until golden brown, 15-20 min.
Allow the cake to cool completely before frosting.
If you want to have a king cake baby in your cake, stick it somewhere underneath the cooled cake prior to frosting.
To make the icing:
In a large microwavable measuring cup/bowl with spout, melt the butter. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until creamy. It will start to set pretty quickly, so I wait until my king cake is completely cool before I make the icing so I can use it right away.
Spread over cake and decorate with your choice of sprinkles.
Enjoy!
