Today I’m reviewing Joe’s Cafe Coffee & Donuts Traditional and Cream Cheese king cakes. Join me!

We had the Joe’s traditional cake at the office, and then I bought the Joe’s cream cheese king cake days later for a party and didn’t get a chance to photograph it. I, of course, looked up Joe’s to get as much information as possible. Side note: I picked up my party cake at Breaux Mart! BREAUX MART! I like you a lot, Breaux Mart, and thank you for having options available for those of us who live “inside the box” when they have to throw an impromptu Super Bowl party! (If you are from out of town and don’t know what “inside the box” means, here is the short version: any time there is a parade on the uptown route, my house is essentially trapped inside and inaccessible by car; yes, there are work arounds but it’s kind of a pain and completely unpredictable.)

Joe’s Cafe Coffee & Donuts is located in Metairie, Louisiana. Which is both definitely New Orleans and also technically not New Orleans. When you go to the Joe’s Website, it announces: “Joe’s Best Mardi Gras King Cakes in New Orleans” That’s bold, Joe. Respect. If you haven’t figured it out already, Joe’s is another donut king cake. For the zillionth time this year, I’ll remind you that I’m not really a donut person and also that this is okay. I can say this is a high quality donut king cake and that it has a huge following in New Orleans, even though I will admit it was not on my radar until this year. In fact, in the Fox 8 king cake bracket poll, the very last two finalists are Joe’s Cafe and Not Too Fancy Bakery! If you’ve been following along at home, you already know how I feel about Not Too Fancy Bakery, and that it is the best king cake that has ever existed ever, but I think it’s cool that two totally different king cake purveyors made the finals.

The Joe’s website describes the cake as follows: “Cinnamon infused layers are braided into sweet handmade dough, then baked to perfection. Topped with creamy icing and colorful purple, green and gold Mardi Gras sugar. Joe’s famous King Cake is baked fresh daily.”

Let’s talk about this. CREAMY ICING?? No. It was not creamy. You know how I’m sure? Because there was no icing to lick off the plate. There you have it. It was good, though. The icing has a definite almond flavor to it. Once again, not my favorite, as you know but I think the quality was there. I also liked the consistency of the icing.

On to the dough. This is a donut king cake but, to distinguish from MDK and Meche’s Donuts this isn’t “a donut.” Does that make sense? It’s a lot closer to a traditional king cake but it’s definitely a donut. And as far as donuts go, it’s really very good. It is bready but on the soft side of bready. I am not sure I would have guessed this was “braided” but it definitely had something going on (and was not just a ring of dough).

Both cakes I had were baked well—very well. I didn’t find the dough to be very sweet but I liked that quality about this cake. I didn’t really get a lot of cinnamon. In fact, this cake was almost savory, save for the icing, sugar, and the nonpareils. 3.5 stars for the traditional.

When I tried the cream cheese king cake, I found the cake sweeter overall but I really liked the cream cheese filling. It was a huge hit at the party and I was happy that I got it. For me personally, not my favorite and not one I will dream about or anything, but I know that is primarily because of my personal preference and not because it’s not a quality king cake. 4 stars for the cream cheese.