For New Orleans natives, getting the fève can be a source of delight or dread.

For bakeries in New Orleans, the first few months of the year are among the busiest. As the rest of the country stares down the barrel of January, sobered by New Year's resolutions, the city is just easing into Carnival, the season of revelry and indulgence that lasts from Three Kings Day (also known as Epiphany) to Fat Tuesday, which immediately precedes the start of Lent. The weeks are marked by parties, by parades, and by pastry, most specifically king cake: a wreath-shaped confection made with a yeasted dough—the kind you'd use for brioche or sticky buns—and finished with white icing and a shower of crystallized sugar that's dyed purple, green, and gold.

King cake is rooted in religious tradition—it's a Catholic custom that's believed to have been adapted from an ancient Roman one—but in New Orleans it's also a “huge economic boon,” Bronwen Wyatt, a baker and a recipe developer, told me recently. “Typically, Thanksgiving through Christmas is a busy time—and then, in other parts of the country, it dies,” she said. It's considered sacrilege, even among the secular, to make or eat a king cake before or after Carnival. In the past decade or so, the season has become a frenzied pageant of baking innovation.

“Even the larger king-cake bakeries are pushing the boundaries now,” Wyatt said as she stood in the kitchen of her shotgun-style Treme house. She poked at a mass of dough that had been proofing in a pan, deeming it more than ready to go into the oven. For several years, Wyatt sold king cakes through a small business called Bayou Saint Cake. Now she offers a king-cake-making class online, adding a new flavor—Funfetti, honey-wheat pretzel, sweet potato with cardamom meringue—to her repertoire each season.