Daring Bakers: May 2008 Archives
Well, close enough. This
months Daring Bakers challenge was to make light opera cake. For those unfamiliar with these cakes, they
are made with a joconde-dense almond cake. The cake is very eye friendly. There are alternating layers of the almond cake,
flavorful syrup is spread on each cake layer, and between each layer is either
a buttercream, or a mousse. Finally,
there is a chocolate glaze poured over the cake. Typically, the cake is very heavy. Chocolate, coffee, and almond flavors are the
normal flavor combination. Our challenge was to make it more spring like. No chocolate, no coffee, no chocolate, did I
mention no chocolate?Since the recipe is SO LONG, I will link to it, instead of displaying the entire recipe.
For us daring bakers, the biggest challenge was picking flavor combinations. Since we were thinking spring time, light, fruity flavors were at the top of most people's minds. Others were immediately sucked into the green tea realm. I immediately wanted to use orange. Then Galliano came to mind.
Galliano has a very light citrus taste, along with some vanilla, anise, and some herbs. Its dominating flavor is anise, like Sambuca or Pernod. I built the flavors around this. Orange-vanilla buttercream with hints of Galianno and Drambuie, the syrup was Galliano flavored, and the liquid used in the syrup was infused with star anise. The mousse was white chocolate, vanilla, and honey. And the final glaze was white chocolate, Galianno, and a hint of limoncello for some additional citrus.
This is a complex recipe. Not overly difficult, just time consuming. If you can balance your time, and the recipe, over a few days, this can be accomplished by anyone.
I made the cake and syrup one evening. The next evening I made the buttercream and mousse. I assembled the cake and cooled it overnight. The next day after work I made the glaze and poured it over the cake. Once cooled, I squared the cake. This is a presentation cake. There is no icing on the sides, so the layers can show. You see them in bakeries all the time.
I loved this recipe and this concept. So did my neighbors. They were willing tasters, and this makes a
lot more then two people can attempt to finish before the cake starts to head
south. Once square, you can get 12 or more rectangle slices from the cake.
As many of the other Daring Bakers recipes, I did this one twice. Not because I screwed up on the first one, but because I had so much fun making this. We have new neighbors, so I figured this would make a great 'welcome to the neighborhood' gift. They told me they were chocolate lovers, so I approached the recipe a different way. I avoided the coffee flavors, but I gave them as much chocolate as they could stomach!
For my second opera cake, I made chocolate joconde (almond cake), I made a Grand Mariner and limoncello syrup, orange-grapefruit buttercream with a hint of vodka, a raspberry lime bittersweet chocolate mousse, and a chocolate glaze infused with vanilla and Grand Mariner. I also ventured into new territory and made a stencil of my logo.
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