King Caaaaaake!

Even though Memphis is a good 6-hour drive from New Orleans, some folks around here embrace Fat Tuesday like it's our own. We have a tiny downtown Mardi Gras parade. But even though we don't have quite the crazy Mardi Gras scene, beads and King Cakes are everywhere in Memphis on the day before Lent.

Every year, I bring a vegan King Cake to work, and I always make the same recipe from Kittee Berns. It's a recipe I tested for her years ago before she went gluten-free.

I've tried cinnamon-praline filling and cherry filling in year's past, but this year, I opted for a Blueberry-Cream Cheese Filling. I used Kittee's vegan cream cheese filling recipe and a can of blueberry pie filling. This was my favorite filling so far:

As for the colored sugar, I already had some yellow sugar that was marked down at Target last Easter. But I dyed my purple and green sugar with a little food coloring.

And I finally found plastic babies! In year's past, I've stuffed a bean into the cake in lieu of a plastic baby. But I tracked down the cute little boogers in a cake shop on Summer Avenue. My co-worker Mark found the baby in his slice, and that means he's supposed to bring the cake next year. But I'm not holding my breath for that. I'm sure I'll be making it again. Here's the little baby all covered in blueberry guts:

Let the good times roll, folks! I'm off to enjoy an Abita in the last few hours of Fat Tuesday.