A king cake, sweet potato stew

Yesterday after dinner I got the bright idea to try making a King Cake, what with today being Fat Tuesday and all. I'd never eaten one before but have decorated probably 100s of the things back in my bakery days. It seemed like something to do with the evening and some rattling around in the cupboards revealed we actually had all the ingredients. I used this recipe but cut it half since we didn't need two cakes. We didn't have any tiny plastic babies or colored sanding sugar so I made the best of it.

I'm very happy with how it turned out. This is after we all had it for breakfast,  there was an ice storm last night so Mr. H. had a snow day on account of the roads and cold (the low tonight is 2 degrees).

I've plated some up to take to my dad tomorrow as well as my inlaws if the roads are better.

Here is the filling. I think next time I might do apricots or something instead of raisins. The pecans were nice.  

And here is great success using a bench scraper to lift and fold the dough instead of trying to roll it.

Since the only cookie sheet got destroyed yesterday morning it was baked on a pizza pan that I covered with aluminium foil, worried that the perforated bottom would let the bottom of the cake burn. It worked well with the half hour suggested bake time.

And here is the recipe for the sweet potato stew mentioned yesterday, it's not online that I could find.

My beans were black beans and great northern beans. And I didn't have bay leaves and thought the scotch bonnet sounded just crazy so both of those got left out.  I did add a whole red onion, who makes stew without an onion?  It is a really delicious stew. I'm making it again tomorrow.  Any strong cheese would be good with it.