Braided King Cake

So you wanna make braided bread, huh?

After having made the king cake on a previous post, I got requests for how to make a braided bread. I wont go into the ingredients and how to mix and how long to rest and yada yada yada... The recipe for this cake can be found on this post. For this batch, I split the recipe into 2 separate cakes.

Instructions:

Go ahead and make the dough just like in the recipe.. when you have finished letting the dough rest for 1 1/2 hours disregard the next few steps about making a canoe shape and rolling your dough. At this point, You are going to punch down your dough and knead it for a bit.. I think 8 minutes.. Now, separate your dough in 3 balls. 

Now its time to go back to kindergarten and make dough worms. 

Flatten your worms into long strips. This is optional... But I like to have the cinnamon (or sometimes pumpkin pie spice or nutmeg) woven throughout the whole cake.

Next sprinkle seasoning on one side of your smushed worms. (you can also make a cinnamon paste with butter to spread inside too!)

At this point,  its time to seal your worms back up with their new yummy innards! 

(I just wanted to say innards)

Just pinch all along the edges until you have made a closed seam down the length of your dough worm.

 Next, you need to secure the ends of the 3 strands of dough. Simply pinch a small bit of each worm at the top to connect. Now we braid! If you don;t know how to braid...

There is an instructable here on wikihow, that will explain the process with the help of some visual aid.. (pictures )

Left over, right over, left over, right over, left over,  right over..... etc... Once you have completed your braid, pinch the two ends together to form a ring.

Ta da! You are so awesome! Look what we have created together!!! Actually, these cakes are alot more impressive after having baked them..  So how do we get to that point?... 

Eggs.

Remeber those five egg yolks you used to make this thing? Now you can use the whites to make your bread pretty.. Just paint some egg white over your dough before popping it in the oven. 

Mama says use 1 egg white and 1 tsp milk. I say.. just use the egg white.. Your choice. Not a big enough difference to me to be able to tell the difference...

ees preety, no?

ok.. Now Ta Da!!

And now you can dust with powdered sugar or make the icing as in the previous post.. I made these for others so I went ahead with all the festivities.. Minus the plastic baby.. Those are hard to digest.. :)

Wonderful! 

Now go get off the interwebs and have a marvelous Mardi Gras!  You deserve it after all that baking!