Mini King Cakes for Mardi Gras and Salt Dough Crown for Lent

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It's been a little while since I posted because life is well, life. So I thought I'd catch up on some posts that I have been meaning to publish. I posted about our family's Lenten traditions and we aren't doing all the traditions this year, but many of them.

Just before Lent started, we celebrated Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, with a mini King Cake recipe that we did for the first time this year.  I usually make one big King Cake, but the mini King Cakes were easy enough for my 3 youngest daughters to enjoy making and decorating with a few friends. 

   
Using 2 cans of Cinnamon rolls (we bought ours from Trader Joe's), we unrolled them and braided the long dough strands and then shaped them into circles for a crown.

After baking the mini King Cakes and icing them with the can icing, my daughters and her friends used sugared sprinkles to decorate each one.

I must say this took a lot less time and the girls had fun making and decorating their mini King Cakes this year.  I'll have to remember this for next year!

A family Lenten tradition we have done for years is the salt dough crown of "thorns" (toothpicks).  Here are a few of this year's photos with my 2 youngest daughters making the dough before we braided it and baked it.

The crown looks like this after it is braided and baked and each sacrifice that our children make during Lent they pull out a "thorn" from Jesus' crown of thorns. During Holy Week close to Easter this crown is decorated with gold paint and jewels to symbolize all the sacrifices we made during Lent for Jesus as we celebrate the resurrection of the King of Kings at Easter!

I hope you are having a blessed Lent so far! 

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