After the holidays, the city of New Orleans gears up for Mardi Gras.

Carnival season is full of parades, balls and its signature dish King Cake.

On one of the most legendary King Cake bakeries in New Orleans is Gambino's bakery.

I have been coming to Gambino's for 50 years.

At least I drove an hour and a half just to get to Gambino's to get one of their delicious king cakes.

For several generations, Campinas has been baking can cakes for New Orleans and the rest of the world.

This are 71st year in business, so we have a lot of experiences.

We have people that have been with us 40 years, 20 years, and the business of King cakes is big business.

In addition to sign the cakes of their bakery, Gambino ships King cakes all over the world doing a little 7800 day, you know, which is a pretty good way.

Probably make about 100,000 during carnival season.

So what exactly is a king cake and how is it made in New Orleans?

It's a sweet Danish toe.

There's cinnamon in it the traditional cinnamon.

It's made from scratch every day, So we start out in the morning by making friends, though the top.

We mix it with, chop it up on the table, and then we give it a moment of rest and we start the process.

I think it arrived from the sleep from the cinnamon roll, and it just expanded from now.

Well, let's instead of making a door and cutting it off, making a little sweet roll, Let's stretch it out.

Let's stretch it out and make a loop out of it.

I don't I don't know where originated from, but this is where they end up being in yola.

The Kate fits right in with Mardi Gras tradition, so it has a traditional three colors.

The green, purple and gold.

And it's faith, justice and power.

Generations of Children have been raised in New Orleans eating cakes during carnival season, A soon as we get weaned off of the bottle, I mean, that's pretty much, you know, the next thing to go in your hand.

It just is.

It just is.

Sharon King Cake was a tradition long before New Orleans became a city.

The cakes name comes from a biblical story of the three wise men visiting Baby Jesus on the 12th Night or Kings Day, celebrated on January 6.

Today, King Cake is available between King's Day and Mardi Gras Day, the day before Lent begins.

The origin of the king cake itself varies on who you ask, but is most commonly believed to have started in France or Spain and was popularized during the Middle Ages.

While King cake might not have been invented in New Orleans, bakeries across the city like Gambino's have perfected it.

There's different parts of the world that celebrate Carnival, but they also have, you know, a version of the King cake.

I think our, you know, we have a lot of sugar and or so I think are so sweet.

I don't think when you go to Europe or even Mexico, it's It's not as UM e.

They don't have the icing on the sugars on it.

Gambino's claim to fame was that they were one of the first bakeries to actually fill their cakes.

We actually call them stuff because most bakeries will add the filling on top like it's strawberry.

They'll just make a regular king cake.

Add strawberry filling on top so we actually put the filling inside the king cake and roll it and then bake the filling in it so the flavor generates throughout the entire king cake instead of just being placed on top.

The final and possibly most important, ingredient in the king cake is a plastic baby baked into every cake.

So the baby originally, you know, was supposed to be like Baby Jesus.

But basically it symbolizes, like health, prosperity.

You know, you're the king, you know, it's it's like the grand prize in the cake.

Before the baby was popularized, many Mardi Gras Cruz would hide a bean in their cake, and whoever ate the peace with the being inside would be the king or queen for that years Mardi Gras parade.

Today, you can't buy a king cake without a plastic baby.

I remember getting the baby a couple of times when I was a little kid, you know, at school it was like, Oh, that was that was popularity gold.

That was pretty cool.

Tradition goes that whoever finds the baby has to provide the king cake for the next party.

But after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

Many bakeries, including Gambino's.

We're not sure if they'd reopen.

It was scary because you wonder if you're I think everybody felt anybody that had a business here was employed here.

You don't You don't know what your future was, so it was very frightening.

Um, right.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Everything was just really slow, um, coming back.

And nobody really knew really what was gonna happen.

The city's come back even stronger and better in our people.

Here are just They're so strong.

In the years since the hurricane, Gambino's popularity has grown stronger than ever.

Some of the bakeries most loyal customers are former New Orleans residents who didn't come back to the city after Katrina.

So they have Gambino's Kinkade's shipped to them wherever they are in the world.

Do you have to live every day to the fullest?

Because we just don't know what's gonna happen?

And I think that's why we celebrate so big here.

E think that's what makes this place so unique.

Um, anywhere else because we just have this joy to view that we love life and we love our culture, and we just wanted t keep going and it's just kind of something to bring people together for, you know, celebration, which we like to do in New Orleans.