King cake’s royalty
Area bakery experts satisfy demand for iconic pastry
Seven-thirty in the morning seems early to be getting a king cake, but there was already a line at Gambino’s on Goodwood Boulevard.
In the back, Beverly Mareland, 76, was five and a half hours into her shift. She’d been baking since 2 a.m., and she’ll keep baking until “whenever we’re done.” The same way she’s been baking for 36 years.
Her hands fly across the dough — destined to become praline-filled king cakes — as she talks about baking and what makes Gambino’s king cakes special.
“We do it all by hand,” she says, pinching the dough shut. “The old Gambino’s way.” Teams of bakers work from an enormous blob of dough, measuring out 1-pound balls, before kneading, stretching, filling and shaping them into one of the the bakery’s signature pastries. Manager Angella St. Romain says the bakery will churn out around 30,000 cakes before the end of the seven-week season.
An Iowa native, Mareland moved south with her husband, who worked at a grain elevator.
“The day his hand froze to the door, he said, ‘That’s it, we’re going south,’” she says. The couple ended up in Westwego, where Mareland started working for Gambino’s. She came to Baton Rouge when the bakery opened a location here. She and her husband, also 76 and still working, have been married “about 60 years.” They raised seven children, and, after her daughter passed away, took in two of her grandsons, 15 and 17.
When asked how she does all that she does, Mareland keeps working and replies simply, “I just do.”
By now, she’s started on the traditional cinnamon king cakes, carrying trays of balled-up dough and 20-pound buckets of cinnamon-sugar mixture as if they were feathers. Thirty soon-to-be king cakes are stretched into rectangles, brushed with oil, and get a liberal heaping of cinnamon and sugar. And, of course, a baby in the middle. Each rectangle is then scored, twisted, shaped into a circle, and put on a tray.
St. Romain calls Mareland “one tough cookie,” saying she wouldn’t know what to do without the woman she calls “the queen of king cakes.” She estimates that, over her career, Mareland has churned out hundreds of thousands of the pastries. St. Romain says she tells other crew members that when they get tired, they need to look over at Miss Bev.
“When she retires,” St. Romain says, “the buidling may implode,”
Across town at Ambrosia Bakery on Siegen Lane, Master Baker Johnny Johnson also works on rectangles of king cake dough.
Each rectangle gets a healthy dollop of the bakery’s cinnamon smear, a fragrant mixture of margarine, cinnamon and sugar. He pauses in the smearing to think when asked how long he’s been making king cakes. Felix Sherman Jr., the bakery’s marketing director, quips, “You ever heard of Moses?”
Johnson doesn’t miss a beat. “Watch your mouth, Abraham,” before he goes back to his cakes, grabbing a handful plastic babies and tossing one onto every other square of dough. Each square was then rolled up like a jelly roll into two ropes — one with baby, one without. The ropes were then braided and shaped into a circle.
Johnson did it in a matter of seconds. This reporter, despite Johnson’s endless patience, took considerably longer and was very thankful her livelihood did not depend on the ability to make a king cake someone would want to buy, much less actually eat.
Tim Landry, owner of Baum’s Fine Pastries & Chocolates, says consistency is the key to making a memorable king cake.
“We’ve been doing it a long time,” he says. “We’re pretty good at it.”
His bakery will turn out between 8,000 and 12,000 king cakes this Mardi Gras season. His varieties include Bananas Foster and Brownie, where king cake dough is filled with brownie batter and cream cheese, then baked.
Many of south Louisiana’s grocery stores also do a brisk business in king cakes. Calandro’s on Government Street starts with logs of dough filled with cinnamon and sugar before stretching them open and adding fillings, which include cream cheese and a variety of fruit. Of course, bakery supervisor Ute Eysink says, customers can custom-order just about any cake they want and the bakery will do its best to meet their needs.
Ralph’s Market in Gonzales will make about 40,000 king cakes for its three stores. Owner Ronnie Trosclair also says Ralph’s is starting a new Patriot Program. If a customer wishes to send a cake to someone serving in the military, Trosclair says, the store will give them the king cake for free.
The customer will only have to pay for shipping. He does add that only king cakes with no filling other than the traditional cinnamon can be shipped internationally because of concerns about the freshness of the cake.
Ralph’s supervisor Jeffrey Bourgeois says the secret to making the perfect king cake is the baking time. Too little, the cake is doughy and too much makes the cake dry.
Like Calandro’s, Ralph’s uses logs of dough filled with cinnamon and sugar, then adds their own fillings. The store features 43 varieties of king cake, including Mississippi Mud, filled with cream cheese, chocolate and pecans. The cakes are then proofed, baked, iced, and airbrushed in Mardi Gras colors before being packaged.
Bourgeois and Assistant Manager Cheerie Teal were also quick to show off the store’s Valentine’s Day king cakes, shaped into a heart and airbrushed red and pink with a chocolate drizzle. The store has also made king cakes for birthdays and school events, and plans to make a batch in Super Bowl colors and pastel colors for Easter.
For those wanting to tackle making a king cake at home, get ready for a long ride.
“It’s not a quick process,” Gambino’s St. Romain says. “You’ve got to have a little patience with it.” Bourgeois at Ralph’s also says that weather can tamper with even the best dough. And a conversation with Mareland quickly shows that it takes an expert to deal with a tempermental king cake.
When told that a homemade dough wasn’t particularly stretchy and the resulting cake wasn’t particularly pretty, she quickly diagnosed the problem — it needed liquids and rest. Something that, after only a few hours of following Mareland around, this reporter also needed.