Some years ago I was fortunate enough to spend a few months working and living in New Orleans. I was fresh out of culinary school and full of naïve curiosity. Time has passed (I’ll give you a hint, Reagan was president) but I don’t believe my curiosity has dissipated, nor has my naivety… or maybe I’m confusing that with being gullible.

Anyhow, I had arrived in the Crescent City before Christmas and left just prior to the Lenten season. Apart from gumbo and blackened foods, I was not familiar with the regional fare. As Lent approached I began to notice signs for the annual Mardi Gras celebration, and also for king cake. Always interested in cuisine du terroir, I asked a fellow cook what it was. He told me it was a pastry you eat to celebrate the twelfth night after Christmas, or Epiphany, which in New Orleans is also the beginning of the Mardi Gras season. He also said that I had to have beignets at Café du Monde.

The next day I purchased a small king cake. My roommate and I worked opposite shifts, but our days off often coincided, so I left it on the kitchen counter for a couple days. We spent our days off either exploring the city or drinking or both. On this particular day we were sitting on our front step halfway through a 12-pack when he asked me what the deal was with the pastry in the kitchen. I had completely forgotten about it. I tore off a hunk for each of us (we didn’t have furniture, let alone cutlery) and, after inspecting it, I bit in. My first impression was that it looked and tasted very much like my mother’s kuchen, a German coffee cake. I bit in again. This time I encountered something hard, almost painful. I spit it out. What landed in my hand was a tiny plastic baby. I can’t even imagine what the look on my face must have been, but I distinctly remember my roommate looking at me and saying, “What the fuck is that?”

I told this story to a co-worker the following day. He smiled and said, “You got the baby, and on the first bite. You are special.” I didn’t feel very special. I was hung over and had a small cut on the roof of my mouth. He asked me if I’d had a chance to have beignets at Café du Monde. I had, I told him, and they remind of my mother’s fastnacht keucheles.

I knew enough elementary French to know that Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, but didn’t know why. Before my friend could explain, the head waiter swished around and answered for him, “Because, dahlin’, we have to get crazy, we have to be really bad…because for the next 40 days we’re supposed to be good.”

Here’s where the story gets current but also a little weird.

I was contemplating writing the story that you’re now reading and googled “king cake.” After clicking through a few sites, I came across one with some interesting information. As I was reading it I saw a name that I recognized; there was also a photo of the webmaster, who looked familiar. As it turns out, the blog I was reading was that of the same cook who more than two decades ago had told me to taste king cake.

Mardi Gras, and the English equivalent, Shrove Tuesday, of course refer to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. On this day Christians are supposed to use up whatever fat or other rich foods they have, and then live simply and introspectively for the following 40 days. It’s easy to see why it’s common to eat rich baked goods on Fat Tuesday. In fact, fastnacht keucheles, the German version of a beignet, translates to English as fast-night doughnuts.

My mother learned to make fastnachts from her mother, who most likely learned from her mother. The handwritten recipe for the dough was given to one of my sisters, who later gave it to me. The recipe is titled “foundation dough,” because it’s a basic one, a foundation, that can be used for a number of recipes, including kuchen and fastnachts. I can

still picture the terracotta bowls resting on our radiator with a towel shrouding the pillow-like dough. I was told not to touch the bowl or leave the kitchen door open too long, lest it become drafty and the dough fall. It was such a mystery, seeming almost magical, how the dough would grow. It may be then that my fascination with yeast dough was first planted.

In northern regions like ours (and others, such as Canada and Great Britain), the day before Lent is more commonly known as Shrove Tuesday, and it is so closely related to eating pancakes (butter, eggs, dairy) that it’s often called “pancake day.” The word shrove is the past tense of the word shrive. When I looked it up in my well-worn American Heritage Dictionary I found that it is an Old English word meaning to confess or offer penance.

Both phrases—Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday—are based on the same principle of welcoming the introspection of the Lenten season. And while I certainly love my mom’s recipe for fastnachts, and have fond memories of her making them, the debauchery of a Mardi Gras celebration certainly seems like a lot of fun.