Consider this the year of the recipes.
Last year I purchased cakes. This year I'm burning up the kitchen with recipes.
This friends, was a fail.
Caroline actually asked me to make it, she had tried it and had problems with the bake times.
People. There are problems with the bake times.
And the dough, the dough was tough. Like, make sure you have fresh denture glue tough. I was worried about my personal teeth with this cake.
In case you're curious, I'm not linking it, but it's the Southern Living Pecan Cream Cheese King Cake recipe.
Man did it have a great color and pretty icing before it disappointed me so badly. I threw it in the trash as soon as our company left, it was that bad.
Here's my list of complaints::
1. The dough is super tough, yes I didn't knead by hand and it's probably my fault for kneading with my Kitchen Aid mixer, but I am not sitting there for 10 minutes giving myself carpel tunnel like a wanna be Paul Hollywood. No.
2. The bake time was bad. 350 for 25 minutes. Still a raw center. I went back and put it back in the oven, cooked but yuck.
3. The dough itself isn't sweet enough and doesn't have enough butter. You're getting all your sweet from the icing and that isn't what this party is about.
4. I didn't roll this monster of a chunk of dough thin enough. There needed to be better instructions for the filling too. I filled thin like a cinnamon king cake, that was wrong. This puppy grew SO MUCH during rises. Then it grew again during the bake to the point that the ends separated big time.
5. The filling almost came out curdled, it tasted fine, but was strange.
It didn't end there. This makes two king cakes.
I had saved the second dough and filling for a retry, just in case.
I grated in a whole stick of butter, rolled it super thin, kept the filling in one tube shape down the middle, and baked in a bundt pan (Nola Bake House style). Changed the bake time to 350, 20 covered and 25 uncovered.
This kept the butter from leaching out, but it was still tough and not up to par.
Zero stars.
Zero stars people. Do not make. It's a waste of bread flour.
