Mr. King Cake is the brainchild of David Magri, formerly of Lawrence’s Bakery in New Orleans. Growing up in Gentilly in the 1960s, he remembers Lawrence’s, at 5242 Elysian Fields Ave., as a popular neighborhood destination—renown for wedding cakes but also attracting a devoted following for its pastries, donuts and, during Carnival season, king cakes.

Years later, when he was running the bakery after college, Margi found himself in the thick of what might be called the crowning achievement of king cake, as the toothsome treat evolved from a local custom into a bona fide novelty phenomenon—the most popular way to share the Mardi Gras spirit and the preeminent symbol of pre-Lenten feasting. In short, a New Orleans icon recognized the world over.

Founded 1947 by Lawrence Aiavolasiti, Lawrence’s Bakery was a throwback to an era before the mass marketing of machine-molded, conveyor-belt king cakes by the likes of Wal-Mart and supermarket chains. Dough was made from scratch and hand braided with just the right amount of cinnamon. Fresh from the ovens, Lawrence’s king cakes were a sensation during the Carnival season, and the bakery garnered nationwide recognition when it began express shipping the festive oval confections in the late 1980s.

New Orleans had always been a family bakery town, teeming with independent purveyors founded by French, Spanish, Italian, Sicilian and German immigrants and their descendants. They carried on an artisan tradition, in which skilled confectioners translated techniques and recipes handed down through the generations.

A master confectioner known as Mr. Wedding Cake, Lawrence Aiavolasiti is credited with one of the most enduring innovations in king cake. Time was when a king cake was a king cake: a simple, dry oval ring made from sweet brioche dough and topped off with plain colored sugar. In the 1950s, Aiavolasiti introduced what is known locally as a “platted” king cake: an oval made from braided sweet dough infused with cinnamon.

Another Aiavolasiti signature was a thin coating of apricot glaze, brushed on after the cakes came out of the oven. Although this extra step was labor intensive, Magri says, it enhanced the flavor of the cake and helped lock-in moisture.

In 1976, Lawrence Aiavolasiti sold the bakery to his nephew, Ernest Aiavolasiti. Ernest died in 1979, leaving the business to his wife, Theresa. Magri and his then-wife, Lisa, daughter of Ernest and Theresa, took the helm in 1983.

They began wholesaling king cakes for express shipment via UPS in 1987, to a trio of upstart entrepreneurs operating under the name King Cake Express. A sign in the bakery depicted their mascot, a Pony Express rider holding a king cake, and proclaimed: “We ship king cakes nationwide.”

They started off shipping 12 or 15 cakes a day. By the end of the Carnival season, they were shipping about 200 a day. “I was like, ‘Man, these guys are onto something,’ ” Magri recalls.

Nevertheless, for reasons still unclear to Magri, King Cake Express didn’t stay in business for the 1988 Carnival season. Magri never heard from them again. “People were calling the bakery telling us the [King Cake Express] number was disconnected, and they still wanted to ship our cake,” he says. By the end of Carnival, the bakery was shipping as many as 900 king cakes a day. Another 1000 or so went to the front of the store, for local customers who were adamant about Lawrence’s deliciously tender Mardi Gras confections. 

The whole family would pitch in, with shifts sometimes lasting 20 straight hours. “Rough time of year,” says Magri, who nevertheless took pride in helping build up what had become a revered local institution. On Carnival Day, the bakery would open up at 5 a.m.—not to sell king cakes, but to supply hundreds of donuts to truck-float riders.

In most any successful family business it’s hard to keep everyone happy, and, alas, Lawrence’s proved no exception. Family feuding ultimately resulted in Magri leaving the bakery in 1990; he became a Smoothie King franchisee. In 1998, Lawrence’s was sold to the Gambino baking family. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gentilly neighborhood in 2005, the bakery never reopened…another fondly remembered landmark gone by the wayside.

The storm wiped out two Smoothie King stores Magri co-owned in Chalmette, a community southeast of New Orleans in hard-hit St. Bernard Parish. “I was fortunate,” he says, “because most of the people in Chalmette lost their businesses and their houses.” (Magri lives in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie; although his house did not flood, he was caught without flood insurance for his business.)

Fortunately for Magri, he was part of a regional Smoothie King cooperative that owned a vending trailer. Taking the trailer to Chalmette and setting up shop to serve relief workers, Margi started to get back on his feet. Eventually, after mortgaging everything they had to secure a Small Business Administration loan, he and his business partner, Charlene Carrouche, reopened one of their Smoothie King stores in Chalmette as well as another outlet they co-owned before the storm, near the University of Orleans.

Magri made king cakes under the Mr. King Cake moniker in 1997 and 1998, but he took a hiatus after his head baker decided to move on. Back then, Magri figured he might just as well focus on his smoothie business.

But the legend of Lawrence’s king cake refused to die, perhaps in part because New Orleanians, post Katrina, have clung more tightly than ever to homegrown traditions. “People have been asking me to bring them back, bugging me for years,” says Magri. “But to be honest with you, I was scared. Just because of the work involved.”

Magri refuses to cut corners. Everything is made from scratch, including his special glaze (which goes on the cakes before the fondant-style icing). He’s even made some finely calibrated improvements to the original Lawrence’s recipe, and scoffs at purveyors who use pre-made frozen brioche dough for king cakes.

“Ours just come out better, and we take personal pride in each cake,” he says. “Everybody that’s working on the bench at nighttime, they like hand braiding and making ’em come out perfect. They actually get excited when they come out of the oven.”