Today we are in Springfield, LA, which is technically part of the Baton Rouge metropolitan area, according to Wikipedia, but I always think of as a “suburb” of Ponchatoula. I also learned from Wikipedia that Springfield is named for its number of artesian springs. Neat! It is not related to the Simpsons and, since I’ve been to Springfield, LA, I can confidently say that it did not serve as inspiration for the fictional town. There is no power plant. There is, however, a donut shop called Navarre’s, which, during Carnival produces Navarre’s Famous King Cakes. They also open at 4:30 am during king cake season for all you early birds. (Side note: this is truly wild. I don’t even know a coffee shop that opens at 4:30 am, and I’ve checked in various cities.) We will be reviewing the Navarre’s Famous King Cakes Strawberry Bavarian Cream king cake.

This is another king cake that comes from a donut shop, but it is a very different experience from the last donut king cake that I had, which you will recall came from Meche’s Donut King in Lafayette, LA. We have to talk about the dough first because that, to me, is what I had the most difficult time figuring out. It was like no dough that I had ever had before. It’s pretty unique, honestly. It’s very light and neither pastry nor bread. I was pretty puzzled by this and had a second slice to see if I could figure it out (obviously). I decided that this was definitely, 100% not brioche. With the knowledge that this came from a donut shop, I used my best deductive reasoning. It was probably a donut, right? I could see how the dough had a donut quality but, without question, it was not fried. I wondered whether it was donut dough that was baked into cake form instead of fried into donut form?

You know me by now, so you’re thinking, “What did your internet research reveal?” The answer, readers, is not much. The most information I could find on Navarre’s was on Facebook, and it wasn’t a particularly helpful page—although I did confirm that Navarre’s is a definitely a donut shop. But the dang donut shop doesn’t even have a real website. Well, they do, but it isn’t functional. It is 2023, Navarre’s! Get a real website!

Still curious upon waking the next morning, I ended up bringing a few slices for into the office for my colleagues, again for science, to get their thoughts on the dough. I made everyone eat the slice separately and hold comments until the end. I learned that this king cake is not for the New Orleans king cake bourgeoise. Guesses on the dough included “hamburger bun” and “Hawaiian roll.” Yeesh—tough crowd, I guess. We did ultimately agree that it was probably an un-fried donut. If anyone can confirm or deny I would personally appreciate that.

(P.S. I love Hawaiian rolls and I really love funeral sandwiches. I bring up funeral sandwiches a lot and no one ever knows what they are. Google it.)

On to the rest of the cake. Strawberry filling was very sugary and jelly-like in its consistency. I initially thought it was in the artificial style of strawberry, but after additional bites I thought it definitely had some fresh strawberry but also lots of sugar. It reminded me of strawberry preserves and definitely had some real strawberry flavor. But lots of sugar. A lot. So much. Maybe the fresh strawberry was wishful thinking on my part, as Springfield is adjacent to Ponchatoula, which is the strawberry capital OF THE WORLD. My colleagues did not think the strawberry filling was real. We left undecided. The Bavarian cream portion of the filling was fantastic. One of the things I love the most about Bavarian cream is that it is sweet but has a creaminess to it that balances out a lot of sugar. It paired really well with the strawberry preserve filling and it was my favorite part of the cake.

The white icing is very traditional—good presentation, sweet, tasty. There was plenty of it but not too much. Okay, maybe a bit too much with the filling. This was a very sweet cake and probably a bit sweet for me, but it was tasty and I enjoyed it just fine. 3.5 stars.