King Cake

So since I'm from the New Orleans area and all--we had to celebrate Mardi Gras with a little party at my mom's. My cool Uncle manages a restaurant in the French Quarter called Acme Oyster House and shipped us up some authentic frozen entrees (woo hoo). Mom invited a few friends, and I was in charge of making a king cake. It's a tradition that is a really long story that I don't know how to tell very well...but the "cake" is basically a cross between pastry & a donut, with sugary frosting and some sort of cinnamony filling. They get more fancy that that, but that is the basic idea. I searched online for a few ideas and whipped one up. Well I shouldn't say "whipped," because it took MUCH more time than that. I made mine with a roasted pecan, brown sugar & butter filling and cream cheese icing. I have to say it came out BEAUTIFULLY. And it tasted EVEN better. It was a hit! Here's a couple pics:
Mom even had a little plastic baby doll for me to insert into the cake. Tradition goes that whoever finds the baby in their piece of cake has to host the next party. The baby is representative of the baby Jesus, believe it or not. The entire Mardi Gras celebration really is based off of the Christ child and such..."funny" because the holiday is the OPPOSITE of churchy! it is an all out PARTY! I think the idea is to party it up before the Catholic lent. Ok I should really go online and read up on it, but I'm not in the mood.