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Mini King Cakes for Mardi Gras!

February 21, 2011 by jessfuel 8 Comments

These Mini King Cake Cookies are perfect for your Mardi Gras celebration! They’re festively decorated and melt in your mouth!

Mini King Cake Cookies for Mardi Gras

One of the best things about living on the Gulf coast (besides cheaper gas and white sand) has definitely got to be Mardi Gras!

When people think Mardi Gras, they usually think New Orleans. But Mardi Gras in the United States actually started in Mobile, Alabama. Lucky for me, one of my best friends, Erin, lives in Mobile, which is only about an hour away from us!

Mini King Cake Cookies

Mardi Gras celebrations run for weeks, and this past weekend we kicked off the festivities with a parade in Mobile. Erin and Mike invited us over for some appetizers and cocktails before the parade.

Since Erin had snacks and drinks covered, I decided I wanted to bring a dessert. The traditional way to go would be to make a Mardi Gras King Cake. Making cakes from scratch is not really my strong suit, so I thought this might be a total disaster. I thought about Mardi Gras colored cupcakes, but that seemed TOO easy.

Mini King Cake Cookies

The sugar glaze and colored sprinkles on the traditional American king cake got me thinking about some similar looking Christmas cookies I love to make. The cookies are anise flavored drop cookies with a sugar glaze and Christmas colored nonpareils.

I wondered how I could modify the cookies for my occasion. Long before I ever knew anything about the cinnamon praline filled doughy Gulf Coast king cake, my French grandfather was bringing beautiful French king cakes home from France.

French king cakes, gateaux des rois, are made from flaky pastry stuffed with almond frangipane filling. Anything almond, marzipan, frangipane or amaretto melts my heart immediately, so these cakes were always a favorite of mine.

Mini King Cake Cookies

In the spirt of gateaux des rois, I swapped the anise flavoring for almond extract in the Christmas cookie recipe and came up with a mini multicultural version of the Mardi Gras treat!

These cookies melt in your mouth with a delicious almond flavor, but they are also super fun. Some of them have a surprise inside!

The babies! A traditional king cake has a little baby, bean, or other trinket hidden inside it. Whoever gets the piece with the baby is king for the day and/or gets to make/buy the next king cake. I found some babies at a craft store, where I also found my green, yellow and purple sugar sprinkles.

I hid babies in two of the cookies for lucky winners. Make sure you put the babies in after baking the cookies if you are using plastic ones! If you add the babies to the dough and try to bake them in, you might end up with a little melted baby surprise.

The cookies came out light & almondy and SOOO good! As much as I love the anise version, my favorite almond flavor really made these cookies shine.

Mini King Cake Cookies

While I was at the craft store looking for colored sprinkles, Nick wandered off and came back with some masks. He was really excited about them, so I got some glitter glue and feathers and went crazy.

I packed up the cookies and masks, and we headed to Mobile for some fun.

Erin made some delicious strawberry guacamole, ceviche and sangria.

All were great! I’ll definitely be making the ceviche soon! We finished up with some cookies and headed out to the parade.

We had so much fun celebrating! Thanks to Erin and Mike for having us, and here’s to a couple more weekends of Mardi Gras festivities!

King Cake Cookies
 
Print
These Mini King Cake Cookies are a perfect treat for celebrating Mardi Gras!
Author: Flying on Jess Fuel
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: Cookies
Ingredients
  • for the cookies:
  • ¾ cup margarine, melted
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • 3 ½ cups sifted flour
  • 5 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 2 tsp almond extract
  • 4 eggs
  • for the frosting:
  • 2 cups powdered sugar
  • 2 tsp flour
  • 1 tsp almond extract
  • 3-4 tbsp milk
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Add all cookie ingredients to a large mixing bowl.
  3. Use an electric mixer or stand mixer to mix until thoroughly combined.
  4. Roll 1 tbsp scoops of the dough into balls and put them onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
  5. Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool completely.
  6. Mix the powdered sugar with 2 tsp flour.
  7. Add 1 tsp almond extract and add the milk slowly until you reach a creamy consistency.
  8. Frost and decorate the cookies!
3.5.3251

 

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Filed Under: Desserts Tagged With: cookies, dessert, holiday

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Comments

  1. Laura says

    February 21, 2011 at 7:49 pm

    the cookies look amazing! what a great idea to make them mardi gras theme!

    Reply
  2. Joanne says

    February 23, 2011 at 8:16 pm

    I love the colors.. And what a cool Bud Light. I might even drink one of those bad boys in such a fancy can.

    Reply
  3. Food Frenzy says

    February 17, 2012 at 6:29 pm

    Congratulations! We wanted to inform you that this post has been selected as the Archive Featured Post of the week on Food Frenzy.

    Reply
    • jessfuel says

      February 17, 2012 at 8:05 pm

      Hooray! =)

      Reply
  4. maria @close to home says

    February 8, 2013 at 11:38 am

    I am soo making this today. Need to get them in b/f fat tuesday!! Thanks for linking up to Friday food Frenzy

    Reply
  5. Debbie McClain says

    February 25, 2020 at 5:50 am

    Wow I made these and they are great. You wouldn’t happen to know the carb count for them? Made them for my mother who doesn’t like cinnamon and my diabetic grandson. Thanks for a great recipe.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Weekend detox Nicoise salad « Flying on Jess Fuel says:
    February 22, 2011 at 12:09 pm

    […] Wings, for beer & wings, and followed that up with ice cream on the way home. Saturday’s Mardi Gras activities included snacks, drinks, cookies, corndogs and late night Mexican & sushi. Sunday we […]

    Reply
  2. Anise Christmas Cookies | Flying on Jess Fuel says:
    December 17, 2012 at 7:03 am

    […] learning, let’s bake now! I made an almond version of these cookies for Mardi Gras a couple years ago. If you want to see step-by-step photos, check out that post […]

    Reply

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ABOUT JESS

Jess is home cook, foodie and proud Navy wife. She grew up in Boston and now lives on the West Coast. She loves to blog, travel, read and write. When she's not working or blogging, she can be found running or relaxing with a glass of wine. Read More…

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