New Orleans, Louisiana – Mardi Gras is here, which means now is the time to devour its traditional treat. Get that king cake in you while you still can! But what exactly is king cake anyway and why is there a "baby" inside?

King cake is everywhere in Louisiana during Mardi Gras season.

The carnival season starts on Three Kings Day and culminates with the celebration of Mardi Gras, which means "Fat Tuesday" in French.

Fat Tuesday is all about festivities and parades in the streets, but also indulging all the decedent and fatty foods before lent, the 40 day-long fasting period that goes until Easter, begins.

Being Christian is not a requirement for enjoying a king cake, but in some cultures, it's considered blasphemous to eat a king cake before Three Kings Day – and most bakeries stop making them on Mardi Gras. That means time is running out to indulge in this tasty treat.

A king cake, has many forms and flavors, though traditionally it's cinnamon and vanilla flavored. It tends to be iced, nice, and decorated with the colors of Mardi Gras: purple, green, and gold. Sometimes it's filled with custard, or cream cheese, and is more like a danish.

As New York Times pointed out, commercial cakes tend to come out like danishes and over the years the traditional king cake flavors have expanded thanks to immigrants to the area. Honduran immigrants added hibiscus, a delicious extra.

But this cake isn't just special because it has a season. It also has something special inside: a baby.

Well, small plastic baby figurine, that is.

The fève, which means fava bean in French, is a small trinket hidden inside a king cake.

These days it's usually a plastic baby, but in the 1900s it was a bean or even a porcelain figure that carnival organizers used to choose the "Queen" or "King" of the festivities.

Modern tradition states that whoever gets the piece of cake containing the baby has to bring the next cake to school or the office during carnival season.

You don't have to go to New Orleans to enjoy a king's cake. You can yourself using one of the many viral recipes out there.

TikTok user brittkham's effort has 1.2 million views. Her version is based on cinnamon rolls from a can and cream cheese, which explains her wish to viewers: "May your Tuesday be as fat as your a**" after king cake season.

The king cake is a Mardi Gras a staple like no other. In fact, as Eater New Orleans reported, even when the parades and floats didn't flood the city with music and revelry in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the cakes were still available.

The pop-up king cake business certainly has continued to boom. To brighten any mood with food, this delicious desert might be just what the doctor ordered - Mardi Gras or not.