I think there will be people who disagree with this, but I think of Haydel’s as the quintessential New Orleans king cake. Many people who are “from” New Orleans claim that a fresh Haydel’s cake is their personal favorite. This king cake not only asks where you went to high school (and yes, there are several wrong answers)—it lists its high school on its professional resume well into its 40s. I’ve got jokes!

My next door neighbor gifted me a giant piece of Haydel’s cream cheese king cake. Now, she gifted me the cake on Sunday afternoon (yes, the same day I ate four slices of Dong Phuong for y’all). So I tucked that behemoth slice in the fridge to brighten up my Monday morning. It worked! I don’t always refrigerate my king cake, but it is a good option for preserving the freshness for an additional day or two. Personally, if I do this, I like to put a slice in a Tupperware container and then take the slice out a couple of hours before I plan to eat it to allows it to reach room temperature. After I did that on my now-glorious Monday morning, I cut the giant slice into two smaller pieces and ate one as-is and put one in the microwave (say it with me, five, not seven, not three)—you know, as an experiment. I should have taken after photos of the microwaved slice for comparison… but Mondays are hard. Mondays with a king cake hangover are even harder.

I’ll say here that while the microwaved slice was more delicious, the difference was not as stark as I expected. Maybe we should be microwaving all king cake? I’ll get back to you on that.

According to the Big Book of King Cake (hereafter “BBKC”)—and, hopefully, we can trust its veracity notwithstanding yesterday’s brioche snafu—Haydel’s was one of the first bakeries to ship their king cakes across the country in the late 1980s. How ahead of their time they were! I’ve been pricing out king cakes for shipping and Haydel’s offers some of the most reasonable prices for shipping in the city, along with Caluda’s, Manny Randazzo’s, and Tartine (three of my favorites that definitely ship and which I plan to individually review this season).

BBKC also claims that Haydel’s was one of the first bakeries to make king cakes with sweet dough and icing. A few anecdotal comments I’ve overheard support the proposition that Haydel’s is the icing OG. The cake has a fairly thin layer of the icing, but it is *very* sweet. And while the dough is also sweetened, it isn’t overly sugary and also has a chewy breadiness (now definitely a word) that balances out the flavor really well.

Once again, I have to play my tiny violin and whine about the fact that I would have liked three or four times as much cream cheese than this cake had because #givemefillings. This king cake has the cream cheese piped around the top of the cake, as opposed to baked in the middle. I found that the cream cheese, which was quite good, kind of got lost in the sweetness of the icing—a problem that was only compounded by its placement. The consistency of the dough was really fantastic and had a nice crumb to it (a term that I very obviously learned and stole from the Great British Bake Off). 4 stars for this NOLA Classic!