Editor’s Pick: Bayou Bakery’s Mardi Gras Treats
The Bayou Bakery King Cake includes a tiny plastic baby baked somewhere inside, promising good luck for whoever finds it.
Since opening his Bayou Bakery in Arlington in 2010, David Guas has become known for his gourmet baker’s twist on King Cake, the famous, mass-produced staple pastry enjoyed throughout Carnival in New Orleans.
The ring-shaped pastry traditionally tastes like a cross between coffee cake and a cinnamon roll, plus cream cheese frosting and usually a fruit filling.
Guas’s version, which has won raves from The Today Show, the New York Times, and the Washington Post (who called it “one of the top 5 King Cakes in the country”), sees the pastry upgraded as a Danish-style cake with “Creole Cream Cheese Filling,” covered in fluffy white icing with generous dustings of colored sugar.
And yes, just like all others, the Bayou Bakery King Cake includes a tiny plastic baby baked somewhere inside promising good luck for whoever finds it.
“BB King Cake” is available for sale individually, packaged with Mardi Gras beads and a colorful card explaining the pastry’s history, and priced at $45, 14 to 16 servings each.
It’s also the centerpiece of the “Mardi Gras in a Box,” priced at $150 and intended for up to eight people — each ready to assume a different character in the included Mardi Gras Murder Mystery Dinner Party Game, and each able to don a different masquerade mask if they so desire.
Everyone can share in the bounty of 24 tri-colored beads and doubloons, fight over the one boa, and toast it all with a round of Hurricane cocktails, compliments of a bottle of the famous Pat O’Brien’s Liquid Hurricane Mix plus the addition of your spirit of choice. Purchases of either are available until Tuesday, Feb. 21 — but orders must be placed at least 48 hours in advance.
The Bayou “krewe” has taken to calling the venue “the Mardi Gras Headquarters in the DMV.” And for those who need some savory foods to go with the sweets, they’ve created a Mardi Gras Season Catering Menu, including a “Festive Feast for Two” with your choice of meats with gumbo or étouffée ($16 to $25 per quart), and “Other Festive Choices,” from Beignets ($3.75 for three), to a dozen Deviled Eggs ($14), to a Muffuletta Platter with a dozen mini-muffuletta wedges ($30), and from Gulf Shrimp Remoulade (market price pint) to Crabmeat Ravigote ($75 a pint). In addition to King Cake and Mardi Gras in a Box, the “Mardi Gras Themed Treats” section of the catering menu also offers Mardi Gras Trinity Praline Custom Boxes ($12 for three pralines).
Any catering order must be placed at least 48 hours prior to pick-up.
Bayou Bakery is at 1515 N. Courthouse Rd., Arlington. Visit www.bayoubakeryva.com or call 703-243-2410.
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