A king cake (sometimes shown as kingcake, kings' cake, king's cake, or three kings cake) is a type of cake associated in a number of countries with the festival of Epiphany at the end of the Christmas season; in other places, it is associated with the pre-Lenten celebrations of Mardi Gras/Carnival.What started out, roughly 300 years ago, as a dry French bread–type dough with sugar on top and a bean inside is now a sweet, sugary and iced Danish-type dough braided with cinnamon inside and a plastic doll underneath.