The only way king cake could get any better is to mini the sucker. I feel that way about a lot of foods, but especially the sweet ones. These Mini Vegan King Cakes may look a little tedious to make, but they’re actually pretty simple thanks to vegan canned cinnamon rolls. I know! So unlike regularly made full-sized king cakes, these are only halfway tedious.
Every year around Mardi Gras time I really want to eat King Cake, but I almost never want to make it. While it’s not hard to do I usually just don’t feel like kneading things. That’s what happened to me last week when the cravings started to hit. In lazy desperation I started thinking about ways to fake it.
My King Cake recipe tastes a lot like cinnamon rolls, and the moment I remembered that I got an idea. Why not use Immaculate Baking Company Cinnamon Rolls or Trader Joe’s Jumbo Cinnamon Rolls to make mini king cakes? It’s such a great cheat! The cans even come with their own icing to cut down on labor. Which is good because for a cheat recipe there’s definitely still some labor.
The process isn’t hard at all, but it’s a little clunky. I used my donut pan to bake the mini cakes, but that didn’t produce a perfect hole in the middle. More like an indention. The cinnamon rolls are larger than the donut pan cavities so they bake over the middle portion. No big deal though because the indention serves as a handy guide for you to cut out your own middle. This was a first time effort y’all, but the cut out solution was actually very simple and clean.
For the colored sugar, I made my own using granulated sugar and food coloring. You can find great vegetarian food coloring out there, or you can even make your own. A quick google search will point you in the right direction depending on the type of coloring you’d prefer.
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