Bread Maker King Cake

I finally did it! After Mardi Gras seasons and seasons of trying, I mixed enough recipes together to make the PERFECT (and relatively easy too) king cake.

First, you start out with Mam Papaul's King Cake mix. (In the Jackson area, you can buy this at Kroger.) You won't follow any of her directions though. Except the ingredients. Mix the ingredients for the cake as directed and put it in your bread machine on the Dough cycle.

Once the bread machine is through doing all of the work, roll the dough into a long rectangle on lightly floured parchment paper (but remember that you need room for the filling). Prepare the cinnamon mixture that comes with the mix and pat it down the middle. Prepare the Cinnamon Cream Cheese Filling.

(I stole the Cinnamon Cream Cheese Filling and the Lemon-Sugar Icing from this recipe in Garden & Gun magazine.)

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Filling:
8 oz. cream cheese
½  cup brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon

Dollop the cream cheese down the middle of the long rectangle. Fold the dough over to close. Pinch and seal. Form into king-cake-shaped oval. Flip the parchment over so the cake will be seam-side down. Cut four or five slits into the cake for venting.  Bake according to the king cake mix directions.

After the cake has cooled, top with lemon-sugar icing and the Mardi Gras-colored sprinkles included or colors of your own choosing. (For Super Bowl, we generally pick the colors of the team we are rooting for, but you could also have silver and red for Christmas, black and orange for Halloween, etc. - because you are gonna want this king cake year round, for sure.)

Lemon-Sugar Icing:

1 ½ cup powdered sugar
2 tbsp. milk
1 tbsp. lemon juice

Combine icing ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix until it achieves desired consistency (adjust with more liquid or more powdered sugar if necessary).

The mix also comes with a baby. (And, yes, you should use that - just don't bake it in the oven!)

Happy Mardi Gras!