Today, we are reviewing the treat that is the Maurice French Pastries General Foster king cake. Maurice is a French pastry shop in Metairie which sells a variety of French delicacies and several specialty king cakes. According to the BBKC, the owner, whose name is Jean-Luc Albion, is not only a classically trained French chef, but also grew up in French Alps… as the son of a French chef. Sounds pretty legit to me. He describes his specialty king cakes as “Chantilly style” because they all feature Chantilly cream and fruit. It is gorgeous and tall and is clearly a piece of artisanal beauty.

This is perhaps the first sandwich-style king cake I’ve had this year and I applaud the sandwich cake. I don’t think Jean-Luc would refer to his masterpiece as a sandwich cake, but let me explain. In my lay opinion, this is a beautiful French dough baked into a ring and then cut in half (horizontally). The Chantilly cream (and other fillings, as the case may be) is then spread on top of the bottom half, with the top half placed on top. Like a sandwich. Then the top half is further iced and decorated. Sandwich cake!

This cake is called the General Foster. The description on the Maurice website (which is in need of an upgrade, I might add) is limited: “Banana Foster folded in vanilla and Chantilly cream.” I went to the description of their traditional king cake for more information. Their traditional king cake is described as: “Sweetest brioche bread, breaded with cinnamon smear, glazed, then iced & toped with purple, green and gold sugar.”

The white icing, somehow, is not overkill. I really don’t understand it but there is a lightness and creaminess to it that makes it more enjoyable than a lot of the traditional white icing I’ve had lately. It is also topped with dollops of extremely fresh whipped cream (we aren’t talking Reddi Whip here, y’all) which perhaps just balances out the sweetness of the icing. The sugar on top is granulated which added a bit of a crunch texture to the bite.

I had kind of a tough time figuring out the dough for the General Foster, which was not to say that the dough was not amazing. The dough is amazing. The looks of it were a bit deceiving… from looking at the top, it looked much breadier (if you see the picture of the cake in the box, it almost looks like an iced hamburger bun). But there was nothing hamburger bun-esque about this dough in texture nor taste. It was light and fluffy and just wonderful. In fact, in some bites it felt almost more like a pastry, and in some bites it felt more like brioche. I decided this is brioche but just a really terrific brioche. I could see the cinnamon in the dough but didn’t get a whole lot of cinnamon flavor, which may just have been because my brain was so focused on the filling. The filling tasted like biting into a fresh banana, if that banana had just been dipped in a thick layer of Chantilly cream and then had the perfect amount of French vanilla essence infused into it.

My one negative comment about this cake (however nitpicky it is) has to do with the filling, but it’s not what you think. Let me be clear. I love banana pudding, banana cream pie, and almost anything banana flavored (except for banana Runts, those are a different level of disgusting). And let me say that it is EASY to screw up banana pudding and banana cream filling. It can be too sweet. It can be chalky. It can be lumpy. It can just be boring. This cake, friends, is banana cream perfection. My gripe here, however, is that this was not giving “bananas foster” in the traditional sense, which is what the name ostensibly references. In my mind, bananas foster invokes flavors of butter, rum, and spice and ALWAYS involves a cooked element. Honestly, the main ingredient in bananas foster is fire. Right? This was not that at all. At all. Honestly, I wish I could rename this cake. General Foster… I get it (do I?) but here is a very short list of names I came up with that would be better for this cake:

Banana dream pie cake
Banana cream dream
Banana cream sandwich king cake
Do you love banana and Chantilly cream? Buy this.

Whatever it is, it is complex, refined, delicious. It is an extremely over-the-top cake that definitely falls into the category of possibly a bit too much to really be considered a king cake, but it also kept so many king cake elements (and subtracted zero) that I’ve decided this is a King Cake Plus. It is a whole dessert, and possibly a meal. 4.5 stars, and maybe 5 stars if I can rename it “Do you love banana and Chantilly cream? Buy this.”