I’m back! I’m glad too; this was an awesome challenge. Thank you to the hosts! Lisa (La Mia Cucina) & Ivonne (Cream Puffs in Venice), the DB co-founders, and also Fran (Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie) and Shea (Whiskful)
This month’s challenge was an Opera cake. I had actually never had an Opera cake before. These are basically made up of five elements: joconde (the cake base), syrup, buttercream, ganache/mousse, and a glaze. A traditional Opera is made of dark chocolate and coffee flavours, but our limitation with this one was to use only light colours and flavours.
The recipe we were given called for white chocolate, but I hate it with a passion. Luckily we were given the option of omitting the ganache/mousse layer and/or the glaze, or to change them entirely for different ones. Though we weren’t allowed dark colours and flavours, we could choose our flavourings, which made this challenge especially interesting. Some of the other daring bakers had AMAZING ideas, so this is definitely one worth scrolling down the ever-growing list of DB blogs.
I decided to do a lemon & mango flavoured cake.
(pardon the photo.. I took it at night, and the lighting sucked. But it was about to be eaten and I wanted a photo of the whole thing)
Among the changes I made (all legal, though I was sorely tempted to use dark chocolate anyway) were the substitution of hazelnut meal for the almond meal called for, the lemon zest and juice that I added to the buttercream and the syrup, and the changing of the glaze and the ganache recipes since I don’t like white chocolate.
There were so many elements in this cake, that I’m just going through them one by one.
Joconde:
This part came out so well! The texture was great, and the hazelnut flavouring worked really well. I don’t really have much to say about this part, except that the recipe called for putting two trays of joconde in the oven at the same time, and I think this would be better to do one by one, because the top could almost have used a bit more time, but the bottom one was almost burnt. It worked out fine in the end, but I still think it would be better to do them separately. I heard similar comments from other DBers, so I guess I’m not alone in that one. Still, you could never tell by the taste or texture. This part was a complete success. I think I didn’t add any lemon flavouring to this, but I don’t remember. If I did, you couldn’t taste it anyway, since the hazelnut flavour was actually pretty strong (in a very good way).
Syrup: Lemon flavoured
This came out quite well too, though very sweet. The first time I accidentally left it on the stove too long and ended up with a really thick syrup, so I did it again so that I’d have something liquidy enough to get soaked up by the joconde when I was assembling the cake. Actually, this was a mistake in reading the recipe.. cause the buttercream is done with a syrup too, and that needs to be heated to a certain temperature. But I messed up thinking that this syrup had to be heated to 225F also, and so it came out thicker than it should have. The second time it came out really well. Note to self: read the recipe properly, dumbass.
Buttercream: lemon flavoured
Ah, buttercream. How can I express how well this came out? It was amazing. When testing the recipe, the hosts had made a mistake/tried something new with the buttercream recipe, and I used their modified, tested version, with lots and lots of butter. It came out lighter than I was expecting, though, and pleasantly lemony. The taste and texture of the buttercream were right on.
Mousse: Ended up scrapping, mango flavoured
What’s a DB challenge without a learning experience somewhere along the road? I wanted to do a mango mousse, and found a recipe online somewhere. I didn’t keep it, so I can’t give it to you. Anyway, the only recipes I could find called for gelatin, and that’s not vegetarian. I couldn’t find the veggie equivalent (agar agar), so I pouted and sulked and got the gelatin. See, I’m pretty much a vegetarian, but mostly for taste reasons. So some of the really hidden non-veg stuff (not obvious enough ones like soup stock — I don’t eat things made with chicken or beef stock.. you can totally taste it), but more things like gelatin or things with red food dye that just might have come from squished bugs or something, I will not mind as much. Now, taste isn’t the only reason I’m vegetarian, so I try to avoid it anyway, but if I make an exception to my vegetarianness, it’s far more likely to be something like that than say, fish, which I will not eat. Anyway. I’ve never worked with gelatin before, and didn’t do it well. The gelatin didn’t set enough before I added it to the mousse, and since I thought it would be fine and then folded in the cream, it was pretty unsalvageable. I tossed it in the freezer as an ice-cream of sorts for my grandmother and decided not to use it. It wasn’t thick enough to use for the cake, and I was still kind of sulky for having to use the gelatin, so I didn’t have any, and didn’t bother trying it again. This was where I really REALLY wanted to just use dark chocolate and make a ganache. Oh well.
Glaze: mango flavoured
I’m not sharing the recipe because I didn’t really like it.. the glaze came out alright, but it was too sweet, so I’m not a fan.
Overall
The glaze made it kind of sweet, and I think I would have loved it with dark chocolate for glaze and ganache, but it came out really well. The cake looked great and tasted good too, especially after it got to sit a day in the fridge. I liked my choice of flavourings, and despite wishing several times that I could have used dark chocolate, I think it worked out better as a challenge this way, because it was just asking for creativity in flavour combinations.. not that lemon and mango is especially original, but some of the other bloggers really did amazing things!
To add a funny story:
The week after I made this (and shared it with my sister, who helped me make it, and my aunt, who is my baking and cooking mentor and critic), my aunt treated my grandparents, my parents my sister and me to a dinner at a good restaurant. When they were reading out the list of desserts, one of them was an Opera cake! My aunt, my sister and I looked at each other across the table and laughed. We ordered one and it was good.. I finally got to taste a real Opera cake, but you know what? My aunt took a bite of it and said that mine was better.. and we agreed. It really was.
I think I just might make this again sometime if I need a really pretty cake and have the time to make it. I think next time I might go for raspberry/dark chocolate, though. I don’t mess with chocolatey goodness. Besides, the slight bitterness of the dark chocolate would have ensured a not-too-sweet glaze.
This month’s challenge in all its yellowy splendour is dedicated to Barbara of winosandfoodies.com, a former daring baker and host of A Taste of Yellow, and to LiveSTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
And also to my mom, because I made the cake for her birthday.🙂
Here it is with birthday candles:
I very nearly missed the deadline I’m slightly late (only by minutes!) for this month’s post because I’m packing my bags to leave tomorrow for two months of travel (first Houston for a cousin’s wedding, then Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, with very short stops in Miami and Bogota on the way). Guess you know what that means, though; I’ll probably be missing the next two months’ challenges. Sorry! I promise I don’t usually do this much travelling. Things will eventually go back to normal.
Recipe is after the jump
