Frozen Mardi Gras Cake Recipes

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a baking sheet.
• Open the cans of sweet roll dough and unroll the dough from each can into 3 strands. Working on a clean surface, place 3 dough strands side by side and gather them together to make one large strand. Fold this in half, and roll slightly to make a fat log. Repeat steps with the remaining dough. Place each log on the prepared baking sheet and shape to make a ring, overlapping the ends and pinching them together to make a complete circle. Pat the dough into shape as necessary to make the ring even in size all the way around. Cover loosely with foil.
• Bake in preheated oven until firm to the touch and golden brown, 50 to 60 minutes. Check often for doneness so the ring doesn't overbake. Place on a wire rack and cool completely.
• Place the cake ring on a serving plate. Cut a slit along the inside of the ring and insert a small plastic baby, pushing it far enough into the cake to be hidden from view.
• Divide the frosting evenly between 4 bowls. Stir 1 tablespoon of milk into each bowl to thin the frosting. Use the frosting in one bowl to drizzle over the cooled cake. To the remaining three bowls of frosting, stir yellow food coloring into one and green into another. Stir the red and blue food colorings together with the frosting in a third bowl to make purple frosting. Drizzle the cake with yellow, green, and purple frostings in any desired pattern. Dust the cake with multi-colored sprinkles and decorate with beads, additional plastic babies, curly ribbon, and other festive trinkets.

Steps:

• Pour the warm water into a small shallow bowl and sprinkle yeast and 2 teaspoons sugar into it. Allow the yeast and sugar to rest for 3 minutes and then mix thoroughly. Set bowl in a warm place for 10 minutes or until yeast bubbles up and mixture almost doubles in volume.
• Combine 3 1/2 cups flour, remaining sugar, nutmeg, mace and salt and sift into a large mixing bowl. Stir in lemon zest. Separate center of mixture to form a hole and pour in yeast mixture and milk. Add egg yolks and using a wooden spoon slowly combine dry ingredients into the yeast mixture. When mixture is smooth, beat in 8 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon at a time. Continue to beat 2 minutes or until dough can be formed into a soft ball. Place ball of dough on a lightly floured surface and knead like bread. During the kneading, add 1 cup more of flour sprinkled over dough. When dough is no longer sticky, knead 10 minutes more until shiny and elastic. Using a pastry brush, coat the inside of a large bowl with 1 tablespoon softened butter. Place dough ball in the bowl and rotate until entire surface is buttered. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and place in a draft-free space for 1 1/2 hours or until dough doubles in size.
• Remove the dough from the bowl and place on lightly floured surface. Punch the dough down. Sprinkle cinnamon over the top. Pat and shape dough into a cylinder. Twist dough to form a curled cylinder and loop cylinder into buttered baking sheet. Pinch the ends together to complete the circle. Cover the dough with a towel and set in draft-free space for 45 minutes until dough doubles in size. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
• Brush top and sides of the cake with egg wash and bake on middle rack of oven for 25 to 35 minutes until golden brown. Place cake on a wire rack to cool. If desired at this time hide the plastic baby in the cake.
• Combine sugar, lemon juice and 3 tablespoons water until smooth. If icing is too thick add more water. Spread icing over cake. Immediately sprinkle colored sugars in rows consisting of 2 rows each of green, purple and yellow.

Steps:

• For Cake: Melt 1 stick butter, milk, 1/3 cup sugar and salt.
• Cool to lukewarm.
• Using a large mixing bowl, combine 2 T sugar, yeast and water.
• Let stand until foaming, about 5-10 minutes.
• Beat 4 eggs into the yeast mixture.
• Add the milk mixture and the lemon and orange rinds.
• Stir in the flour, about a 1/2 cup at a time.
• (Save out a cup of flour for putting down on the surface you're going to knead your dough on.) Knead dough until smooth; 5 to 10 minutes.
• Place in big, mixing bowl that's been greased with 1 T butter.
• Turn dough to grease the top then cover and let rise until doubled.
• For the filling:Mix the 1/2 cup brown sugar and 3/4 cup granulated sugar and the cinnamon.
• For the topping: Using food coloring, tint 1 cup sugar Mardi Gras colors (1/3 cup each of yellow, purple and green. You can make purple using equal amounts of red and blue food coloring.) You'll be sprinkling this on later.
• When the dough has doubled, punch it down and divide in half.
• Roll half into a 30x15" rectangle.
• Brush with half of melted stick of butter.
• Cut into 3 long strips.
• Sprinkle half of the filling on the strips, leaving the last 1" strip (plain) for sealing.
• Fold each strip lengthwise toward the center; seal.
• Braid the strips into a closed circle.
• Repeat with the other half of the dough.
• Place each cake on a large baking sheet and cover with a damp kitchen towel.
• Let rise until doubled.
• Brush each cake with beaten egg.
• Sprinkle tops with colored sugars in a creative, criss-cross fashion.
• Bake in preheated 350 degree F oven for 20 minutes.
• Remove from pan while still hot.
• Place a plastic baby in each cake from below.
• Wrap cakes tightly in plastic.
• Can be frozen.