It's Mardi Gras in Acadiana, and that means good times, parades, beads, and of course king cakes. Although Mardi Gras isn't known for pranks, there's an excellent opportunity for one right under your nose you may have never thought about.

whole king cake w baby
Debbie Ray via facebook
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How The Mardi Gras King Cake Tradition Began

Mardi Gras is a celebration rich in tradition.

We've been active participants in so many Mardi Gras traditions for our entire lives. So long in fact that we've forgotten the meanings behind many of the traditions we observe.

The king cake represents the Epiphany when the three kings are believed to have visited baby Jesus.

Whoever hosts a Mardi Gras party buys or makes the king cake and hides a plastic baby somewhere in the cake. The person who finds the baby is dubbed the King or Queen of the party.

Finding the baby is supposed to represent luck and prosperity.

But, there's another tradition that goes along with finding the baby in the king cake.

You get the baby, you host the next Mardi Gras party, or at least buy the next king cake.

This brings us to the best Mardi Gras prank you're probably not taking advantage of.

King Cake Babies
Staff Photo/TSM
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King Cake Full Of Babies

In a Mardi Gras king cake, there's only one baby. The thrill and risk of getting the baby are all part of the fun.

In theory that is.

Although no one would dare admit it, some people unscrupulously stash the baby back into the king cake when people aren't looking so they don't have to buy the next one.

If one king cake baby is good, plopping a dozen babies in the king cake would be a dozen times better, right?

You know you've got handfuls of king cake babies in your kitchen junk drawer you've been hiding for years because you didn't want to have to buy the next king cake when you bit into them.

Dig them out, suck it up and go buy a king cake, and put 28 babies in that cake!

You won't have to buy another king cake this Mardi Gras...you'll be swimming in them.

Make it happen, and send us the video of your unsuspecting guests as they realize they've just been had.

Happy Mardi Gras!

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To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

Gallery Credit: Angela Underwood

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