Every year, I make a King Cake for Fat Tuesday.  I gather up all of the supplies.  I take a deep breath and get ready for a King Cake baking marathon.

Unfortunately, this year something tragic happened.  I lost Baby Jesus.  A whole bag full of Baby Jesuses.  You see, you are supposed to hide a tiny Baby Jesus doll in the cake and the person who gets the piece with the doll has to bake the cake for next year.  Why?  Well, I’m sure I read it once on Wikipedia, but I don’t recall it in detail.  Let’s just say that it has something to do with Christmas, Lent, Jesus the King, New Orleans, and cake.  ‘Nuff said.

Sadly, this has happened before.  One year, I went searching from store to store for a Baby Jesus to bury in the cake and no luck.  I had to resort to an astronaut figure that I once got our 4-year-old Jacob at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas.  Needless to say, we also bought some space ice cream on that trip.  On such a trip, you have to purchase space ice cream.  Since that time, I have given the astronaut figure a place of honor on top of the coffee pot.

The astronaut suit, just a safety precaution, in case there’s a slip and (shock!) a dive into the piping hot pot of coffee.

After that mishap, I went on Amazon.com and purchased a whole package full of Baby Jesus dolls for like $1.29, plus about $5 in shipping and handling fees.  I used the Baby Jesus dolls for a year or two and had them stored in my baking supplies cupboard.  I can visualize them there.  Sitting so happily behind the bottles of vanilla extract, I knew I would never again need to frantically search for Baby Jesus dolls.

Then came last night, I looked behind the vanilla extract and nothing.  Vanished.  I then searched high and low.  Everywhere I could imagine.  Nothing.  Vanished.  A whole bag full of Baby Jesuses gone.

The bag full of Baby Jesuses, now just a memory.

Frantic!  I needed to do something fast.  That’s when I resulted to pop culture and Minecraft.  I have never actually played Minecraft, but I have many a time seen my boys playing Minecraft and talking about Minecraft, but after a few seconds watching them play Minecraft motion sickness strikes.  I have however gathered that they make tiny Minecraft figures that could pinch hit for Baby Jesus.  Bingo.  That’s how a Minecraft Pig saved the day.  Oh and if you see a bag of Baby Jesus dolls, please let me know.  In a year, I’ll be needing another one.

The astronaut/Minecraft team preparing for “The Cake.”  Okay, I must admit that I suspect the astronaut may be responsible for the disappearing Baby Jesuses.  Once you’ve had a turn in the cake, you’ll always crave another.

It was determined that the pig had “The Right Stuff.”

It was a long and winding road, but it was worth it.  Hey, spoiler alert…  the pig is hidden in the green sugar to the left of the crown (i.e. 9 o’clock on the cake).