Mardi Gras!

We had a good time at our house on Fat Tuesday!  We started the day with our festive pancakes, which came out okay but not as well as I hoped!  The kids didn't care, they were excited to have pancakes on a day other than Sunday!

After Jack went down for a nap, we turned on some Cajun music (via Pandora) and got the party started!  We made Mardi Gras masks for the kids and talked about some of the Mardi Gras traditions.  Mostly they had a good time with the dancing that commenced as soon as the masks were made.  I have a great video I will have to upload, they were really going crazy!  Apparently they have some Cajun blood in them or something, because they really seemed to know how to dance and sing to the Cajun music!

After the dancing slowed, while Jack continued a two-hour power nap!, we started on a king cake.  Started being the key word here... I wound up making it over a period of a couple of hours, in short spurts here and there.  The final product came out nicely, but I have to admit that this was my first time to proof yeast and let a dough rise (I use a bread machine for everything else!), and somehow along the way I forgot the eggs.  Then as I was trying to roll out the dough it was terribly sticky and I lost my temper with the first poor king cake.  It cooked into a very tasty blob, but the second one came out very nicely after I figured out how to spray every single surface with a generous amount of cooking spray!

I thought it was really yummy, the kids thought it was so-so.  I think the recipe could nicely turn into cinnamon rolls, I think I will have to try that out soon!

The rest of the day was spent with more Cajun music, coloring pages on Ash Wednesday and Lent, and a huge delicious meal of pulled pork tacos.  I'd say we definitely had a fun day!