VIDALIA — If there was one thing Jessica Remington learned living in Omaha, Neb., it’s that Mardi Gras season in the Midwest just doesn’t taste right.

Sure, they have pastries covered with green, purple and gold confections and maybe even cooked with a small plastic baby inside, but once you took a bite, everything was wrong.

“In Omaha, the king cakes are horrible,” Remington said.

A native of Vidalia who had lived in Baton Rouge for several years, Remington knew what king cakes were supposed to taste like.

When the Midwest failed to offer anything close to the correct flavor for the braided pastry that is a cross between coffee cake, sourdough bread and a cinnamon roll, Remington decided to find a recipe and make it herself.

“It took a lot of trial and error, because a lot of people’s recipes there aren’t good, so it took finding the right recipe and the right filling, and once I did it was like magic in my mouth,” she said.

Now, Remington is offering the Miss-Lou a chance to sample the fruits of her Nebraska labors. She moved back to Vidalia last year, where she has taken the position of baker at The Bakery Cottage, which is owned by her parents, Jeff and Linda McClure.

“When we decided we were going to move back, I knew we were going to add king cakes to the lineup at the bakery,” she said. “There are not a lot of choices for buying your king cake in Vidalia.”

Remington’s king cakes — which come from a traditional recipe — all have a white glaze on top, and customers can choose to have the cake decorated with sanding sugar or with colored frosting on top of the glaze.

She also offers a chocolate-coconut king cake, which is a traditional king cake filled with cocout flavored cream cheese filling, coconut, chocolate chips and pecans, and then topped with vanilla frosting, toasted pecans and coconut and drizzled with chocolate.

The Bakery Cottage’s king cakes are available by pre-order 48 hours in advance, though Remington said when she has extra dough left over from preparing a cake, she will use it to make mini-cakes the size of cupcakes.

In Natchez, king cakes can also be found the Donut Shop, Uptown Market, the Markets and Walmart.

Uptown Grocery manager Gia Shafer said that even if she didn’t know when Mardi Gras season rolled around, her customers would remind her.

“My customers called me this year and said, ‘What about king cakes,’ and I said, ‘I will have them ready in two days,” she said.

The seasonal pastry is so popular Shafer said she actually kicked off the annual baking spree — which will last right up to Fat Tuesday on Feb. 9 — by making a seven-layer king cake to serve as a groom’s cake at a wedding reception.

Shafer said when things get into full swing, which happened last week, she can fill her bakery box with 30 cakes a day and then start over the next.

“We have tie-dye shirts here, so it hides the icing stains when things get really hectic,” she said.

In addition to traditional cakes with the typical fillings, Uptown offers specialty king cakes such as the bacon praline pecan.

“I know it sounds weird, but bacon in the cinnamon dough is awesome,” Shafer said.

But one of her favorites is a king cake served with white chocolate drizzled over the top and chocolate covered strawberries.

“It’s a little more sexier looking king cake,” she said.

At the Donut Shop, confectionary seekers can find cakes filled with strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, lemon, Bavarian cream and cream cheese.

This year, the shop is also offering a cheesecake flavored king cake, and is continuing its offering of Mardi Gras donuts, which are decorated like king cakes.

The Bakery Cottage is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Friday and 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays.

Uptown Grocery is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.

The Donut Shop is open 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday and 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. It is closed Mondays.