Sweet baby Jesus it’s King Cake

Not being Catholic or southern, I’m not too familiar with King Cake. But since it’s Mardi Gras time and King Cake is a subspecies of my favorite thing in the entire world — cake — I knew I had to have my own this year. That and I’ve always wanted a naked baby Jesus.

But seriously, why the plastic baby? When I bought a King Cake from Whole Foods, the box just said the baby was supposed to bring good luck to whoever finds it. Hiding a small plastic figurine in an edible food seems more likely to bring on the Heimlich than good luck, which is part of the reason the bakery worker at Whole Foods told me not to put it in the cake. (I begged her to hide it for me so I’d be really surprised, but she refused.) Wikipedia doesn’t have a good explanation for the baby, either, except to say in Europe they use a bean instead.

Even besides Baby Jesus, the cake is thick with symbolism. It’s covered in three colors of icing — the Whole Foods box says the purple is for justice, the green is for faith and the gold is for power. On my first piece I got a heaping amount of faith and no power.

My first piece turned out to be my last. The cream-cheese King Cake tasted like dried-out coffee cake but without any cinnamon or nuts. Plus, I found the baby in my first piece, which may or may not have been because I remembered where I placed it.

But with Mardi Gras festivities just starting to pick up, this won’t be my only piece of King Cake and I look forward to finding many more naked babies.