I think I especially miss living in Louisiana during the winter, as Mardi Gras begins to roll around. This year it’s toward the end of February. Though it was born out of the Christian tradition, there are many fine secular ways to celebrate Mardi Gras, including second line parades and king cakes. If you’ve never had king cake, you’re missing out. At its simplest, a king cake is just a cinnamon roll that’s been twisted in the shape of a giant donut and then iced with yellow, purple and green frosting. Sometimes they’re filled with cream cheese or pralines. Sometimes you can find chocolate or strawberry king cakes, and sometimes you can find them around other holidays like Christmas or St. Patrick’s Day. They’re always bright and delicious at any time or day, whether you’ve got a beer or a coffee in your hand.
These cakes came to the Gulf Coast during colonization, when the Spanish and French brought with them the celebration of Carnival. The root of those celebrations is the January 6th Epiphany, often called the Twelfth Night. That’s when the three wise men came to give baby Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and the symbolism of those three gifts dictates the colors of the icing on the cake. Gold was a symbol of power, that became yellow frosting. Frankincense was a symbol of faith, that became green frosting. Myrrh was a symbol of justice, that became purple frosting. More recent tradition is to bake a tiny, plastic baby Jesus into the cake. Tell you what, nothing beats the look on your friend’s face when he’s just bit down too hard on a surprise baby Jesus figurine. Imagine when they used to make them out of porcelain!
“Finding” the figurine is supposed to bring you good luck, but go on and tell that to your dentist. Some places bake the cake without the baby in it. They just rest it on top because it’s a choking hazard, but where’s the fun in that? Nabbing the tiny Jesus also means you’re on the hook for buying the next round of king cake. Although Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday”, the celebration isn’t just one day long or even just one weekend long. For some Mardi Gras carries on for most of the month, between church stuff like Ash Wednesday and party stuff like building the parade floats. There are lots of get togethers during this festive period. After Epiphany comes Lent. That’s when you swear you’ll never eat king cake again.
King cake is so loaded with symbolism that most people in New Orleans will tell you it’s bad juju to eat one outside of Mardi Gras season. I suppose sometimes a cake is just a cake, but more often than not, it’s not. This brings me to King’s, excuse me, President Trump’s inaugural cake.
Let’s get the facts out of the way. On the night of any presidential inauguration, there are big parties. At many of the parties, there’s a cake. The new president generally cuts an official cake in a flashy way so that the press can get good celebratory photos. These galas are a kind of publicity junket. They are carefully manufactured early moments for the incoming administration to showcase its preferred symbolisms and set a particular tone.
Trump’s inaugural cake was a replica of Obama’s 2013 cake. Trumps cake was made by a small-time baker who didn’t know that it’s duplication was unauthorized by the original celebrity baker. The baker of Trump’s cake then donated all profits from the cake to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization whose president referred to Trump the day after his election as “a man who stands opposed to our most fundamental values.” In the parlance of our times, the optics of this incident were not good.
First question: Why would the Trump people want a replica of Obama’s cake? Answer choices:
A. They are lazy or incompetent, so busy devoting brainpower to other, obviously more important and longterm elements of the transition that they didn’t care what kind of cake they got, and hey, everybody knows the Obamas have good taste. If that’s true, why didn’t they use the same baker? Is that the art of the deal, or did they want to avoid endorsing a liberal baker? Hopefully not the latter, because that original baker still gets credit for the cake’s design and the new baker is a loudmouthed liberal, too.
B. They wanted to reclaim the cake’s meaning or somehow insult Obama by reproducing it. Well, we know that Trump stayed in the Obamas’ room at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, though it’s not yet confirmed whether he frosted it yellow or not. I suppose he might get some kind of trollish delight out of having the same cake as Obama, but how petty and inarticulate, if so.
C. Obama just had the absolute best cake. Because Trump is happy to admit that Obama’s was the cake of all cakes, truly tremendous, an exceptionally excellent cake made by the very best and very nicest people.
Trevor Noah asked another important question about this cake on The Daily Show, which acquired the cake after it was presented at the party the night before: What should we make of the fact that it is full of styrofoam? Yeah, only about three inches of the lower tier or the cake is actually cake, because that’s the piece they cut into and then make a big show of eating. Answer choices:
A. As Trevor Noah said, “it’s all styrofoam. Just like Trump’s administration, this cake is bad for the environment.” The symbolism of its fakery is so clear, as abrasive as the squeaky noises of styrofoam itself.
B. Ah ha, this is a trap of contradiction! This is proof the cake is not a replica of Obama’s because Obama’s cake was not filled with styrofoam. It was authentically a cake. “Ace of Cakes” Duff Goldman, the original baker and television star at Charm City Cakes, made actual tiers of red velvet, lemon poppyseed, pineapple coconut, and pumpkin chocolate chip cakes with layers of Swiss buttercream in between. Goldman said it was a long process of paperwork to be chosen to bake the inaugural cake, as opposed to Trump’s baker, who said that “the order came in while she was out of town and that the client had brought in a photo of the cake from Obama’s inauguration, asking her to re-create it. ‘They came to us a couple of weeks ago, which is pretty last minute, and said ‘We have a photo that we would like to replicate.’” Obviously, she was not vetted.
C. All that fondant is probably still edible. I have often dreamed of a cake that is nothing but frosting. Look at how good it looks. Who cares if styrofoam is a human carcinogen?
Third and final question: What does the new baker’s $1,200 HRC donation mean? Answer options:
A. The two bakers and general manager of Buttercream Bakeshop are three tough broads and LGBT allies making the best use of what resources they have. Who says a cake is just a cake?
B. They’re going to make a fortune in gay wedding cake orders thanks to this publicity. At the time of this writing, their HRC post on Instagram logged 1,500 likes and 100 comments. Their post giving credit to Goldman for the design and announcing the upcoming donation logged 4,800 likes and 1,100 comments. Totally worth the short term sacrifice of $1,200. You can’t buy that type of press.
C. Whether they’re liberals or just nasty women, poking Trump in his thin skin is so easy, why wouldn’t you if you had such a clear shot at it? Thank you for your service, ladies.
I doubt very much this will be the last cake-related publicity fail on the part of President Trump. It’s been less than a month since he took office, and this isn’t actually even the first cake to come up! Want to see a video of Donald Trump’s head as a cake being wheeled through the streets to the Trump Tower? At least that one, word has it, was a real cake. Perhaps next, he’ll be caught eating it with a spoon. I mean, this is a man who eats pizza with a fork. As they say in Cajun French, laissez les bons temps rouler.
Last year, there was a pro-Trump parade float at Mardi Gras depicting him as a king. But if I know anything about Louisiana, it giveth as easily as it taketh away. Mr. President, if you’re reading this, watch out for the baby Jesus.
