L'Opera! : Daring Baker's May Challenge

I was happy to see this challenge was cake and a fancy one at that. I quite enjoy baking and decorating cakes though I had never heard of an opera cake.

Due to our crazy schedule this month and only having baking time on the weekends, I didn't get to this cake until Memorial Day. By that time, I was not much in the mood to make this cake anymore. I already knew I was going to be reducing the recipe by at least half when I went to the grocery store. I was even more glad of that when I saw the price of the ingredients require. Almond meal was over $11 for two pounds and the white chocolate bar(the only one I could find in the whole grocery store) was almost $4 for 3.5 ounces. If I had made this cake full size I would have spent over $20 just on those two ingredients, though I would have had some almond meal left. As it is, my little cake is worth about $10 and it's not even pretty. I skipped buying the almond meal and made my own, which may have not been the best idea.

My cake has a definitely gritty texture, due to the almonds. I followed the directions and allowed the sponge cake to cool on a piece of wax paper which didn't go so well since the side against the wax paper became quite soggy, which I thought might happen yet still did it. I used my own favorite buttercream flavored with lemon extract and also flavored the cake with lemon syrup and skipped the mousse as I am not a fan of mousse.

I didn't really understand how the cake was to be assembled since the directions didn't specifically say. I put butter cream on the top as suggested and once I added the glaze, it slid right off. I ended up scooping that all off and pouring glaze all over the cake since it was already stuck on the sides from sliding off.



I admit, my attempt at this cake was rather lacking in enthusiasm, but based on the cost on ingredients alone, I don't see myself making this cake again. The taste was nothing special, but that was also my fault since I didn't want to spend anymore money and tried to work with what I had on hand. Maybe a traditional chocolate version would be better. I am not a fan of white chocolate, but I will take dark chocolate any day. At least the little slice is kinda cute.



Be sure to check out the other DBer's attempts at opera cake on the blogroll, and if you feel up to attempting this recipe yourself you can find it here.