Growing up, Brandon Trosclair’s definition of a king cake was the one he was raised on from Ralph’s Market. His father worked at the Gonzales grocer, and at 15, Trosclair began pulling the Carnival overnight shift, too. He discovered the art of baking the filling inside of the dough, which he says can give the pastries a flatter appearance but is also what keeps them moist. He learned how to airbrush the frosting, delicately painting the surface with icing.
And then he finally tried a king cake from a different bakery, biting into a crunchy exterior of granulated sugar. His worldview was shaken.
Every local bakery or grocery store has its own POV when it comes to Carnival. And residents’ standards for how a king cake should look and taste are set at an early age, often shaped by the familiarity of the dessert they have easiest access to: the ones boxed at their community supermarket.
Slices of king cake from Calandro’s Supermarket and Ralph’s Market
A red velvet king cake from Ralph’s Market
But in the era of social media, the lure of a specialty flavor is just as effective at erasing neighborhood borders.
Trosclair, today the owner of Ralph’s, recalls when its king cake lineup brought a customer from Alexandria to the store.
“She bought four,” he says. “The grocery business is so competitive. But if you create something special … it brings people from all over.”
King cakes now connect grocers with customers around the globe. Ralph’s ships worldwide during Mardi Gras. It’s an interesting study on regional preferences, Trosclair says. Ralph’s No. 1 online seller is apple cream cheese pecan, which isn’t as popular in-store.
In Mid City, Calandro’s Supermarket bakes 18,000 to 24,000 king cakes yearly, depending on the length of the season.
ZuZu King Cake from Calandro’s Supermarket
“King cakes are a huge draw that get people to flock to the stores. Most of (a grocer’s) customers are going to be around the immediate area,” says Blaise Calandro III, store manager at Calandro’s. “People come from Lafayette or New Orleans to get our king cakes.”
Instead of a traditional ring shape, Calandro’s makes a heftier pastry with a smaller hole in the center. It’s more real estate to load with goodness like cream cheese, figs or apples. Calandro’s offers over 50 flavors, including 22 labeled as “gourmet”—think: a boozy bananas foaster, or ZuZu, encrusted with chocolate, coconut flakes and pecans.
Around 2010, Calandro says the store began to lean in to its gourmet collection, decorating cakes with crumbles of Italian cookies and drizzles of peanut butter or chocolate.
“Now, other grocery stores will do gourmet flavors. I think that’s where the Baton Rouge scene kind of split itself from the New Orleans-style, big-ring, citrusy king cake,” he says.
18,000-24,000
[Number of king cakes Calandro’s Supermarket bakes yearly, depending on the length of the season]
And in 2025, the double- and triple-digit lists of flavors at Capital Region grocers appears to be a winning formula.
Ralph’s hires around 20 extra staffers between its locations to keep up with Carnival demand. The Calandro’s bakery team logs extra hours.
“It’s kind of like their Super Bowl. … They go to town for these two months,” Calandro says. “That’s part of the reason we don’t do king cakes outside of Mardi Gras. By time Fat Tuesday rolls around, they’ve been going hard all season. It also makes the king cakes we do this season so special. It builds demand and rarity.”
Bavarian cream, chocolate and cream cheese ooze from the center of this salty-sweet treat, slathered with rich chocolate ganache, caramel and sprinkles of pecans.
A milkly, vanilla cake is stuffed with cream cheese and smeared with fluffy whipped cream and purple, green and gold icing. Watch for rosca de reyes, a wreath-shaped Carnival pastry enjoyed in Latin American countries on Jan. 6.
