King Cakes and Bingo
Eloise Market and Cakery
Through Feb. 17
The first thing you need to know about coming to Southern Louisiana is that you don’t eat king cake out of season. It doesn’t matter if it’s being sold somewhere or if it’s on your bucket list. Out-of-season king cake is bad luck. People will judge you. It’s a whole thing. Luckily, with Epiphany on Jan. 6, it’s officially king cake season, and Eloise Market and Cakery is doing their annual king cake-making class.
Pulling up, I wasn’t sure what to expect because I was under the impression that king cakes take a lot more than two hours to make, and I was right. The staff at Eloise made the dough and premeasure the ingredients for you over two hours before we arrived. The class ran smoothly, and the instructions were clear enough that everyone left with a king cake that tasted good and looked … exactly how they designed it.
The hardest part of the class, instructor and owner of Eloise Market and Cakery Madelyn Schmidt said, is not playing with the dough when it’s set in front of you. (You can over work it.) It is genuinely a test of will power, and some people did fail at that step.
It was a chill class. Schmidt even gave instructions for how the process would change if you were to attempt it at home. Everything was explained step by step and demonstrated, and we had minimal places to mess it up. For example, you could choose to not follow instructions and pour less than the whole cup of sugar and cinamon mix onto your dough, so it’ll be less sweet.
“But you gotta tell people you made it,” Schmidt quipped.
While waiting for the cakes to bake, Schmidt hosted bingo. It provided a fun structured social aspect to the class, which meant that people could arrive alone, and still have a fun night. At $40 per person, the king cake class is very affordable for a custom baking class (which can start at almost double) and comparable to the cost of buying a king cake. The music choices were fun, and people were vibing, dancing and chatting.
There’s a real dearth of activities for people in Baton Rouge after 5 p.m. that don’t involve alcohol. The Mardi Gras season in particular is full of drinking heavy activities like parades and parties, so it’s nice to see a class like this that’s accessible to non-bakers and people who don’t have $100 to drop on a night out. It’s Eloise’s fourth year of king cake classes. Their first year in the new bigger location on Perkins. Hopefully it’s here to stay.
