Welcome to “Deep Gras,” king cake fans. For those of you who have heard the term “Deep Gras,” I have found it is very polarizing. I think most New Orleanians hate it, and honestly, I don’t love it. But it does have the benefit of being pretty accurate. If you haven’t heard it, I’ll attempt to explain. We are also reviewing a king cake today! In honor of entering Deep Gras, I’m reviewing an inside-the-box king cake for those of us that really can’t leave our houses for the next week (or at least without some severe anxiety). Today we are reviewing the Sucre Sweet & Spicy King Cake!

In 2020, a woman in New Orleans named Dominique LeJeune first used the term “Deep Gras” on a WTUL radio show and then posted something of a Mardi Gras lexicon (“Updated list of Mardi Gras terminology 2020.”) This list of terms included a full definition of Deep Gras. Someone else then got their hands on that and made the following post which was condensed from its original version:

“We are now entering Deep Gras. The period of time between noon Wednesday and midnight Ash Wednesday. You now accept that everything you do for the next week revolves around Mardi Gras. You are about to see everyone you’ve ever known, and meet strangers that you’ll soon know. You will sleep too little. You will drink too much. You will eat and dance A LOT. It’s a time of community, celebration, and the good times really do roll. Everyday problems become put on pause. It’s without a doubt the happiest time of the year. Live it up, y’all!”

I think the reason that New Orleanians hate the term “Deep Gras” is pretty much the reason New Orleanians hate most things—they are fond of romanticizing the days of yore and are generally opposed to change and anything new school. In other words, a new Mardi Gras term coined in 2020 shouldn’t really even be a thing. Y’all know I’m right. My point here is that, whether you like/hate/use/avoid this term, we all know that the Wednesday before Mardi Gras is the start of the madness. It is the first day of seven straight days of parades on the Uptown route (and other routes). Offices close early. Traffic becomes insane. Sleep becomes rare. Alcohol consumption generally increases. And king cake becomes omnipresent.

I mentioned the struggle of living “inside of the box” yesterday. There are pros and cons to living both inside and outside of the parade box. I personally kind of love living inside of the box; you can easily travel within the box freely before, during, and after parades, and you can move in and out of the box on foot very easily. You can also drive out of the box on most days without too much of a struggle, but getting back in is much, much more difficult. Luckily, much of what we need to survive for this seven-day period exists inside the box, and that includes delicious king cakes. Sucre is a specialty “sweet boutique” in New Orleans. It opened some 15-odd years ago on Magazine Street in the Irish Channel and was pretty unique and cutting edge at that time with its gorgeous macarons and delicious gelato, among other delicacies. Sucre closed its doors—seemingly for good—a few years ago, and then recently reopened post-(intra?)pandemic under new ownership. The product isn’t quite the same as it was back in 2010 (or even 2016) but it’s close enough.

The Sucre brand has always been heavy on style points, and that is especially true when it comes to its king cake. The king cake under the original owners was covered in glitter and gorgeous. This year, they advertised a specialty limited-edition cake called the Sweet and Spicy. I was actually alerted to this cake by a friend/colleague and resident of Kansas City, who is still on the Sucre mailing list after several trips to New Orleans. When he emailed me, I was all like, “Of course I’ve already heard of this.” And I think I maybe had heard of it (who really knows at this point), but this email prompted me to actually order and purchase one.

I picked up this cake and it was just gorgeous. It has a beautiful glitzy yet understated beauty to it. There is a standard white icing which tasted just fine, but there was not anything very special about it. The description of the cake referred to it as a “glaze,” but this was a tad heavy, in my opinion, to qualify as a glaze. But okay, sure. On top of the “glaze,” however, is where things get exciting. The cake is topped with a “spicy infused” crystallized sugar that really brings the heat. I loved it. It’s got a great texture and a very pleasant level of heat. I love spicy things; I love sweet things; I love spicy sweet things. I’ll add that I gifted a slice of this to another out-of-town friend who was visiting last week and let’s just say that I should have warned her about the spicy aspect. It really caught her off guard and not in a good way. If you serve this to people, make sure they know what they’re getting themselves into.

I’ll also say here that, historically speaking, I’ve never particularly loved the Sucre king cake dough because it is a little on the bready side of the spectrum for me. It’s a breadier brioche that has a lighter cinnamon flavor—it’s there, but it’s subtle. But I also must say that I did really like this dough, actually. I liked the way it was braided. I did have a very fresh cake and we know that’s important. But despite being fresh, this is the kind of cake where, regardless of the freshness, a little pop in the microwave really helped bring out the flavor of the dough (particularly the buttery flavor of the brioche).

I thought the filling was just fantastic. It was described on the website as a “creamy chocolate ganache.” Ganache brings to mind a heavier, richer chocolate and this was much lighter, but in a good way. It was really more of a chocolate cream cheese, but a fantastic chocolate cream cheese in that it was light in texture, had a wonderful chocolate flavor, but also had a tartness to it. My gripe here was that the cake wasn’t super consistently filled within the cake in addition to the fact that the cake wasn’t very uniform in its ring shape. One side was WAY bigger than the other. Some pieces had more filling than others. I had four slices so I could test this theory. Okay, five. They were small slices from the much smaller side but it ended up being a pretty significant portion of the cake. This is my favorite thing, actually. I love eating multiple slices because I’m trying to figure out the cake. It ate much of it. I really loved this cake and it was different from anything else I have had this year. 4.5 stars.