“I’m one of six, so family events are huge,” said Deacon Levy, fifth of the children. So, it is no surprise that cooking is one of his favorite pastimes. “Lately, you are seeing more savory king cakes,” he said, noting a boudin-filled cake he saw.ĭeacon Levy hails from a big Catholic family that likes to cook. In each of three cylindrical dough pieces, he stuffs cooled étouffée, then pinches it tight and then marries them by braiding and shaping into an oval king cake. Other tips: Make a tight, not saucy, étouffée if using frozen crawfish, add more seasoning, but use less seasoning with boiled crawfish.ĭeacon Levy’s version also has more cheese than the original he tasted. The crawfish king cake is not difficult to make but requires defrosting the frozen bread dough. “He made his pastry from scratch, but I took his idea and made it my own with a lot of shortcuts.” “John Caluda was an award-winning pastry chef and had this,” Deacon Levy said. “I started serving it to family first,” he said, sometime before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.ĭeacon Levy’s inspiration for this rich seafood delicacy was eating braided crawfish bread at the former Coffee Cottage on Metairie Road. This king cake, prepared especially during the Lenten season, is always a big hit with family and friends. “There is cheese in the icing – it is a wicked Alfredo sauce that, once reduced, looks like icing,” Deacon Levy said. In actuality, it is a bread dough stuffed with cheesy crawfish étouffée, “iced” with a whipped cream-Parmesan/Romano cheese blend and dusted with colored shredded cheese. It is braided bread with the appearance of being iced with a sugary glaze and then dusted with colored sugar.

Looks can be deceiving at first glance of this king cake. It looks like a king cake, but when Deacon Gary Levy serves his crawfish king cake at parties alongside sweet king cakes, he writes this disclaimer: “You better shift your mind set, because what you are about to taste is savory, not sweet.”

Clawfish king