NOLA Eats King Cake Tasting: Gâteau de Boeuf Royale is the winner!

The Gâteau de Boeuf Royale won the "Homemade" category at the NOLA Eats King Cake Tasting this past Saturday! It was a really great event and many thanks to Leslie over at NOLA Eats for organizing, and to Barbara Yochum for hosting the event at her gallery.

Some things I learned from my original recipe:

• Making suet pastry dough is a giant pain in the rear. It's easier to use rendered fat than ground or shredded fat. And no matter what, it's probably not going to come out the way you think. I'd like to think I have a good method down for it now, but I have about 6 lbs. of dough in the fridge that attest to the trial and error process I had to go through.
• A little bit of stock with a little bit of cornstarch works well to keep the filling from drying out. The pastry dough absorbs a good amount of liquid so having it thick helps keep it juicy.
• The filling is much easier to work with after being chilled and the juices/fats have had a chance to congeal.
• An egg wash makes all the difference.
• Gastriques are amazing, wonderful things and I want to put them on everything.

For those of you who came out to the event, thank you! And for those of you who missed it there were a ton of great homemade entries and a great selection of retail cakes from around the city. (Sucré. Seriously. Awesome cake. And the glitter on my teeth was a nice finishing touch!) I'm sure NOLA Eats will have a write up on their site soon, so please visit over there and keep an eye out for a follow-up to the event!

I'll hopefully be getting another recipe up here in the next couple of days. I was focusing on the event all last week, so I apologize for falling behind.