Haydel's King Cake invents new colors

Tartine's cavernous cinnamon King Cake

Sure as the streetcar will ride down St. Claude and Joan of Arc will have another birthday, Twelfth Night means we are once again free to dig for the Baby J When the clock strikes Friday, the season of king cake is once again upon us.

Named after the three kings who brought gifts to Jesus, King Cakes can be traced back to colonial times, when French and Spanish visitors likely brought the tradition of king cake parties from Europe.

These days, just about any bakery worth its yeast has their own take on the food that is most synonymous with Mardi Gras. Throughout the season, NoDef will do the difficult work of digging into the flaky innards of this explosion (of flavor). Today, desite risking admonishment from the Phunny Phorty Phellows captain, we decided to get a head start on the festivities...for your sake. If you want eat a king cake tomorrow, you better buy it today! We managed to comandeer king cakes from old-line legend Haydel's and Uptown upstart Tartine. Since it's hard to be funny on an empty stomach, we offered up the sacrifice to NOLA natives and New Movement comedic duo Chris Trew and Tami Nelson. Here's how the tasting played out:

Haydel's

Tami: I like the way that the Haydel's sugar melts between the purple green and gold and it kinda creates these other colors between them. So between the purple and the green you got "gurple." And then between the green and yellow you got "grellow." And that’s really pretty

Chris: And between the purple and the yellow you have…

Tami: ‘Purellow’

Chris: This looks like what all king cakes look like since I was a child. Before I knew what a king cake was and someone described what a king cake was I think this is what I saw.

Tami: Well I'm going cut it, so im going to go ahead and comment on the cutting. It cuts very easily which is helpful because usually when you are eating king cake you are eating it with other people not just yourself. If you were by yourself it wouldn’t matter, you could just pick it up like a donut

Chris: If you are by yourself eating king cake then you are awesome

Tami: (Eating) Mmm I think that so far as far as texture is concerned, it's nice and moist and doughy, which is what I like in king cakes. I don’t like it when king cakes are too dry.

Chris: I agree with all of that. Again this tastes exactly like what it should. I guess it's pretty average but is that a bad thing? I think when it comes to king cake I think that might be a really good thing and that it is wonderfully average.

Tami: It tastes like what king cake tastes like.

Tartine

Tami. Now the second one looks like a bagel.

Chris: It does.

Tami:  Where is this from?

ND: Tartine

Tami: Okay. Tartine’s looks like a bagel and it doesn’t have the the ‘gurello,’ ‘purellow,’ and what was the other one? Um preen?

Chris: Gurple

Tami: It's just blocks of color, which is fine, it’s just a different style.

Chris: This looks like the immunity necklace on "Survivor."

Tami: Yeah it does

Chris: Like it’s a really solid structure

Tami: If you were on "Survivor." Mardi Gras Island

Chris: Yeah, which I would totally dominate in by the way

Tami: Yeah, you would

Chris: So this doesn’t look like it's going to be awesome. It looks like it's going to be below average, but I could be entirely wrong and I will chew this with an open mind.