Only the most tradition-bound folks bake their own king cakes in New Orleans. Not because it's difficult, but because you're rarely more than a beads-throw away from wonderful, freshly baked choices for sale. Starting Jan. 6, the city is festooned with the treats, available throughout the Carnival season, which ends with Mardi Gras. This year it's Tuesday.

The colorful cakes are sold at grocery stores, drugstores, convenience stores and gas stations. Bakeries with names like Randazzo's, Haydel's and Gambino's do a brisk business all year-round, but during Carnival it's like ... a carnival for them.

Judi Bottoni/Associated Press (ENLARGE)

David Haydel Sr. braids the cinnamon and sugar dough to be shaped into king cakes at Haydel's Bakery in Jefferson, La., a suburb of New Orleans, in December. The Carnival season favorites are sold in boxes or bags. Most contain a warning: 'Small plastic baby baked inside cake. Do not eat baby.'

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"In the bakery business, well, it's Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, then it's New Year's, New Year's, New Year's and you take a break," says David Haydel Sr., owner of Haydel's Bakery in New Orleans. "But for us it's Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras. The busiest time of all."

The history of the king cake began in 12th-century France, where the cakes were baked on the eve of Jan. 6 to celebrate the visit of the three kings to baby Jesus. This is the 12th day of Christmas, Kings Day, or Epiphany. A small token, usually a bean, was hidden in the cake as a surprise for the finder.

Now the prize is a small plastic baby, but no one can say definitively how the modern tradition came to be. "Lots of people think it's the baby Jesus," says Haydel, "but that's not true. It just evolved into something cute you could put in the cake."

Whoever got the prize was to throw the next party during Carnival. In these busy times, the finder now simply is charged with providing the next king cake.

In New Orleans and most of Louisiana, no office or school is empty of king cake on Jan. 6 and beyond. The rule is, when you cut your piece, if you so much as expose the baby — even a toe — that counts, and it's your baby and you're buying the next cake.

It was only when I moved to the Atlanta area and had trouble finding one that I started making my own cakes.

King cakes were introduced with little decoration on a simple ring of dough. The only requirement: purple, green and gold frosting or sugar. Now anything goes. They are filled with cream cheese, apples or cherries, even chocolate. I prefer the simple kind. An exalted coffee cake.