At Epiphany, Colorful Sugary Cakes Are Stars Rising In The Yeast

It's enough to make you wonder if someone (The greeting card industry? The toy lobby? Children?) is conspiring to turn Epiphany into the next big date on the retail calendar. No sooner had I cleaned up the merry and expensive detritus of the December holidays than my kids came home and told me we needed to set their shoes by their beds — filled with hay, no less — for the wise men and camels who would come and fill them with gifts. You mean to tell me that after underwriting eight nights of Hanukkah and the candy-striped generosity of the North Pole, not to mention a frequent-flying tooth fairy, now I'm on the hook for a fleet of gift-giving dromedaries? Well, as long as it will encourage my kids to straighten their shoes, I'm on board.

Maybe it's due to an influx of Louisianans who came to Nashville after Katrina, but for some reason, there seems to be a broader local awareness of Epiphany, aka Twelfth Night, which commemorates the arrival of the magi (and their gift-giving camels) to view the baby Jesus 12 days after his birth in a manger. In New Orleans, Epiphany — celebrated on Jan. 6 — kicks off the carnival season, which culminates with Mardi Gras sometime in February or March. It's also the day that king cakes start showing up in all their purple-green-and-gold-sugared glory.

At the Turnip Truck Urban Fare in the Gulch, pastry chef Nicole Wolfe, a New Orleans-area native, rolled out her first king cakes just about the time the camels were sniffing around the hay-filled sneakers. Wolfe and Sam Tucker, both former pastry chefs at neighboring Watermark restaurant, set out to make a cake that would approximate Wolfe's childhood favorite from Randazzo family bakers in Louisiana. The brioche-style dough containing yeast, milk, flour, egg yolks and sugar gets rolled out into a flat sheet and painted with butter, cinnamon and sugar. After each basting with butter, the dough gets folded again, until it's the right size to form into a ring. Wolfe and Tucker stuff their cakes with a variety of fillings, including cream cheese, blueberry-ginger compote, and the gorgeous tart lemon curd often found on Turnip Truck's buffet table. After baking in a convection oven with steam to yield a golden-brown hue and a moist elasticity, the cake gets glazed with an icing fortified with vanilla paste and sour cream.

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