I've seen a lot of very different cakes called King Cakes and made none of them myself yet so am only providing commentary and some links. It seems to allow anything from a rolled coffee cake to an elaborate pastry concoction to a simple but fancifully decorated layer cake: so long as it is well decorated in mardi gras colors and has a plastic baby doll inside somewhere. it is often circular with a center hollow like a doughnut or bundt cake, to give a crown-like appearance, though this doesn't seem to be required. Most, often, though, it seems to be much like a sweetened bread enriched with sour cream, formed into a long roll, and curled around itself to form the doughnut.
A review of some of the recipes suggest that your favorite cinnamon roll bread recipe will work as a starting point. Add a pint of sour cream and enough flour to make a firm dough. Instead of rolling it out and slicing it after the cinnamon filling is added, roll it out more thinly, spread the cinnamon filling more thinly, place a tiny plastic doll somewhere in it, and roll the dough up into a single long tube shape. Wrap the ends around and gently mold them together to form the crown and bake per recipe directions. Cool before decorating, typically with a glazed frosting and/or colored sugars. Or try one of the "real" recipes:
Some recipes on line:
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/traditional-king-cake-100000011529 from Southern Living
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Mardi-Gras-King-Cake/
The gumbo site probably also has recipes for king cake and other traditional desserts
A potluck revealed more kinds of king cake than I would have guessed from the web pages I was having, including cherry fillings, no fillings, cinnamon fillings, yellow cake, and cake made from doughs like moist coffee cake, possibly egg bread style. We did a filling of cinnamon, brown sugar, and finely chopped walnuts that did very nicely in thinly rolled bread dough. Glazes coated thickly with colored sugar were the most consistent elements.
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