Daring Bakers - Opera Cake

Give me a D, give me an A, give me an ..... oh never mind. Yes, it's Daring Baker time again. Be prepared to be inundated by opera cakes. Don't fight it people. There's no escape. They're everywheeerreeee!!

When I saw this month's challenge I couldn't help but wonder just how many, if any, operas feature cake. Are there any arias devoted to pflaumenkuchen? An arietta in praise of madelines?

The computor says nooooooooo.

The closest I could get was a song called 'Opera Singer' by the band Cake. It goes a little something like this - I am an opera singer, I stand on painted tape, It tells me where I'm going, And where to throw my cake ... ooops.... cape. Eat your heart out Mozart!

So what about my opera cake? Well, first of all I had to choose the flavour. The stipulation from the hosts was that the cake must be light coloured. So I went for rose syrup and pistachio buttercream. I wish I had some deep and meaningful inspirational reason for choosing this. But no, it was the first thing that popped into my head and I just went with it. Sorry.

Now comes the making of. Well, it was quite a long and eventful experience.

First of the all the cake. It all went very smoothly, right up until I popped it in the oven. As I stood there patting myself on the back for a job well done, I spotted a little bowl of melted butter going all 'what about me' on the kitchen bench. Dooooh!!! I yanked the tin straight back out of the oven. Poured the batter back into a bowl. Mixed in the butter. Washed and relined the tin and shoved it all back into the oven. Crossed fingers and wished on a star. Amazingly, it came out again all risen and golden and spongy and cake like.

Next, the buttercream. I melted and beat and whipped. Runny goo. Delicious runny goo, but utterly useless. So I started from scratch and somehow, someway ended up with lovely, light fluffly buttercream. Don't ask me how. I was just along for the ride.

Followed by the white chocolate mousse. Clumpy curdled mess. Not delicious and equally as useless. This was no mystery. It was not a good idea to try to whisk the cream and melted chocolate together. Starting again, I mixed ever so gently and ended up with lovely light mousse.

I pushed my luck to the limit and went for the glaze. In a stunning upset, I actually managed this one first go. Haaa!

Pulled all together it looked like this.



And how did it taste. Well it was very nice. Everyone enjoyed it. But to be honest, it was not quite nice enough to justify the effort all over again. I am glad I tried it, but you can't win them all.

Thanks to this month's hosts Ivonne, Lis, Fran and Shea for a great challenge. Please visit the Daring Baker Blogroll to see what my fellow Daring Baker's have created. If you are interested in the recipe, you can find it here. If it's not there yet it soon will be.