King cake season is upon us, and that means south Louisiana bakeries are kicking production into high gear. At The Ambrosia Bakery on Siegen Lane, that means nearly doubling its baking staff during Mardi Gras.
New Orleans natives Cheryl and Felix Sherman opened Ambrosia Bakery in 1993. Twenty-seven years later, it’s become a go-to for the local community, offering up wedding cakes, birthday cakes and, of course, king cakes to the Capital City.
Ambrosia Bakery sells king cakes with around 19 different fillings and in three different sizes. The team behind Ambrosia has also trademarked its popular Zulu King Cake, which began after a request for a signature king cake from the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club in New Orleans more than a decade ago.
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225 Dine sat down with co-owner Felix Sherman Jr. to talk about how the bakery preps for the season.
How many employees do you have? How many more do you hire for king cake season?
We usually have around 60—come king cake season, we have close to 100. The thing is is that every one of our king cakes are handmade. There’s actually a video on YouTube that kind of gives you an idea. Every king cake is handmade, and it’s not made by a machine. I mean, we use machines to make part of it [such as mixing the brioche bread dough], but the overall king cake is all done by hand.
How many king cakes do you make each year, and how many of those get shipped?
We usually make around 20,000-25,000 a year, and we’ll ship anywhere from 2,000-3,000 a year.
How early do workers begin baking, and what does their typical day look like?
They’re here baking right now. The ovens literally do not get shut off, and another crew will be coming in. What they’re doing is prepping and making all the king cakes for the next day. They usually come in and start making these around 2 p.m., and, as time goes on, they’ll be here longer into the night. The next crew usually comes in around 4 a.m., and they start getting everything else ready for the display case to actually open for the day.
How did you come up with the Zulu King Cake?
The Zulu King Cake is made with coconut spread on the inside, along with cream cheese and chocolate chips all on the inside with a baby—a baby goes in every king cake, for sure. Then we cover it with chocolate icing and toasted coconut on top. The whole Zulu parade is about coconuts. Well, what goes best with coconuts? Chocolate, cream cheese. My mother invented it. I wasn’t even working here when they came up with the concept for it.
If you could make any flavor king cake that you don’t already sell, what would it be and why?
It would be a banana cream cake with actual pieces of sliced banana in it. It just takes a lot to sit there and cut bananas and put them inside a cake—way more than what we could possibly do now. But a banana cream cake is pretty awesome.
What do you think are the qualities of a good king cake?
The main thing about our king cakes is that we stick to tradition. It’s an oval shape. It’s braided bread, just like the tradition said. There’s a baby Jesus inside of it—the baby is Jesus that people are searching for, and the three wise men are actually searching for Jesus in a never-ending circle. You can see the tradition of the king cake because that’s what it’s all about. It’s got to be moist. It’s got to have a decent amount of filling on the inside. We put a certain amount inside each one. It’s got to be fresh, and taste good. We feel that we meet all those needs.
Is there anything else you’d like customers to know about king cakes or Mardi Gras season?
We love Mardi Gras. It’s a favorite time of the year, and sometimes it comes really fast. We get real excited about it. We’re able to make a product people love to eat, so it just makes it really fun for us to make something people want to take and enjoy and serve to other people. Every bakery has their own little way of making king cakes, and this is the way we’ve always made it. We just want to make everyone enjoy it and want to come back and get another one and make it a tradition.
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The Ambrosia Bakery is at 8546 Siegen Lane. It’s open Tuesday-Friday 6:30 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday 6:30 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday 7 a.m.-1 p.m. To find more information, visit the bakery’s website or call 763-6489.
Editor’s note: Quotes were edited for brevity and clarity.