May 2008 Daring Bakers - Opéra Cake

Opéra Cake

It’s that time of the month again, Daring Baker time! My first year as a Daring Baker!! This months challenge was chosen by the co-founders Lis at La Mia Cusina and Ivonne at Cream Puffs In Venice together with two new members Fran at Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie and Shea at Whiskful. They chose a cake that any keen baker would have on their list of to-makes – Opera Cake, oh la la! The recipe is a mix of different layers and recipes from two fabulous cookbooks - Dorie Greenspan’s Paris Sweets and Tish Boyle and Timothy Moriarty’s Chocolate Passion. I own both, but up until now had not cooked from either.

The syrup soaked sponge layers and buttercream.

Opéra Cake is a cake of many acts, and is indeed a bit of a performance, but this is not a negative comment, as I enjoyed making and then assembling the parts to make a big, rich and decadent pastry shop cake. The layers are joconde (almond sponge), syrup, butter cream, white chocolate mousse and white chocolate ganache. The flavouring was up to the individual baker, but the colours were to be pale and Springtime like. I chose a French liqueur to flavour mine, Framboise (raspberry). I forgot to put the melted butter on the joconde, but it still seemed fine without it - I was very relieved =)

In the process of being cut into slices. The glitter was really over the top - just the yellow sugar was more elegant!

I decorated with pink edible glitter to reflect the Frambroise and yellow sugar crystals so that it would be yellow as well in keeping with the suggested dedication of this post to Barbara, who has worked so hard with her Taste of Yellow (in support of) LiveSTRONG Foundation cancer events. Here’s to you Barbara!

Yum yum!

Thanks to Lis, Ivonne, Fran and Shea for a fun challenge. As always if you’d like to see more Daring Baker Opéra Cake posts click to blogroll link here – I will be!