L’ Opera Cake

This months Daring Bakers Challenge was the Opera Cake. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what an Opera Cake was. Come to find out, its an elegant French dessert made up of 5 components. There is a joconde (a cake layer), a syrup , a buttercream , a ganache or mousse and a glaze. Typically flavored with chocolate and coffee, our cake was to be made light. No dark colors at all. When I asked hubby what flavor he would like, he said vanilla bean. Since I have a rather large stash of vanilla beans, we went with vanilla bean. After seeing some of the amazing flavor combos on the DB private blog, I wish I would have done it differently. Maybe if there is ever a next time, I’ll do it chocolate!

The one mishap I did encounter was, I made my cakes in too large of a pan. Instead of 10X15 pan, I used a 12X17. My layers were way too thin. But I didn’t let that bother me, I just forged on! I made the cake and the syrup the night before I served my cake. My syrup was flavored with vanilla extract and brushed on each cake layer to moisten and flavor it. Next was the buttercream flavored with the vanilla bean to spread between the cake layers. Then it was chilled before adding the ganache layer. So far at this point, everything is O.K. (Besides my skinny cake layers)

Next came the white chocolate ganache. Flavored with, you guessed it, a vanilla bean. Spread out on the top of my final layer of syrup soaked cake. Here is where I messed up again. More chill time. Like 3 hours chill time to set the ganache. Oops! I didn’t have 3 hours. I had like 30 minutes till serving time. So I stuck it in the freezer while I made my glaze.

The whole time I was making this cake, I kept thinking I should use some of my Chocolate Covered Strawberry Jam to flavor the frosting. But I was on a Vanilla Bean mission. Till I got to the glaze. The temptation over came me and I strained some of the jam to flavor the glaze. I was thinking I would get this pretty pink color. WRONG! Not the color I envisioned. But it tasted great. In fact, it was my hubby’s favorite part of the whole cake.

I poured the glaze over the not chilled enough cake. It was a little sloppy the first serving, but the chilled leftovers sliced up great and looked real purdy.

I am dedicating this month’s challenge to Barbara of winosandfoodies.
While Barbara is no longer an active member of the Daring Bakers, she’ll always be an honorary Daring Baker for her bravery and character in the face of a challenge.
Barbara is the force behind the food blog event called A Taste of Yellow that supports the LiveSTRONG foundation started by Lance Armstrong. This year’s LiveStrong Day is in May so we decided that we could show our support by dedicating our respective challenge posts to Barbara.
ht: Ivonne
Special thanks go out to Lis and Ivonne, our co-founders, as well as Fran and Shea for introducing my to the famous Opera Cake. You can get the recipe from one of these gals.
For a symphony of cakes, check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll. ******************************************************************
More Daring Baker Challenges

Bostini Cream Pie
Lemon Meringue Pie
Perfect Party Cake
Cheesecake Pops

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