Daring Bakers: Opera Cake

Key Lime and Strawberry Opera Cake

What a fabulous recipe, but so intimidating!

I have never heard of an Opera or a Clichy cake until the announcement of this month's DB challenge. Lis, Ivonne, Fran and Shea our hosts this month gave this description:

"For those of you that don't know about this cake, it's an extremely elegant and polished French dessert that is believed to have been created around the beginning of the 1900s. Many people credit a gentleman by the name of Louis Clichy with inventing the cake and that's why it's sometimes referred to as Clichy Cake. .......................................................................................

........a cake that is made up (usually) of five components: a joconde (a cake layer), a syrup (to wet the joconde), a buttercream (to fill some of the layers), a ganache or mousse (to top the final cake layer) and a glaze (to cover the final layer of cake or of ganache/mousse)."

After reading this description (and seeing photos of this eloquent cake) all I could think was "this is definitely going to be a challenge".

This month the challenge is being dedicated to Barbara from winos and foodies, who hosted a blogging event called A Taste of Yellow, which was an event to show support to LiveSTRONG day May 13th this year).

To coinside with the spring theme and LiveSTRONG Day, our hosts asked us to use light colors and flavors in the opera cake. Traditionally, an opera cake is flavored with dark chocolate and coffee liquors. I thought a while about what flavors I would use and I came up with strawberry and key lime, and a light rum. I ended up using the buttercream recipe from Dorie's Perfect Party cake. The recipe is a combination of Dorie Greenspan’s Paris Sweets and Tish Boyle’s and Timothy and Moriarty’s Chocolate Passion

This was the order of my flavors: First the Jaconde

Buttercream----- Strawberry (1 cup pureed strawberries added)

Syrup----- Key Lime (about 1/4 cup)

Mousse/Ganache----- Light Rum (2 Tbs.)

For the Glaze----- Key Lime (I added about 1/3 cup)

This was definitely a very involved recipe. I wouldn't suggest doing this in one day since the setting time can take some time. I actually made the jaconde a day before, and made the other components the next day. I'm so glad I had the opportunity to learn about and bake this cake, it was fun and fantastically delicious. Thank you Lis, Ivonne, Fran and Shea!

Don't forget to check out the other DB'ers concoctions here

You can view the recipe for the Daring Bakers’ Opéra Cake here on Ivonne's blog.