A whiter shade of pale, DB Challenge May

Or should I say I starred in the remake of Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho and the cake came tumbling down? Good morning Sister Lis, Good morning Sister Ivonne..... Those two brave ladies were the hosts of this Months Daring Baker's Challenge (chorus: again? sorry girls, just had to do this hehe) co-hosts this month were Fran at Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie and Shea over at Whiskful and they chose for us to bake an Opera cake. Thank them for having me bake opera not sing it for the walls surely had come down right away!
An Opéra cake 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.

All theory, now down to the basics and nitty gritty kitchen time. Part of the cake was almond flour, I couldn't find it and used a bag of almonds and ground it in my Magimix together with a couple of tablespoons flour and sugar. That worked, gritty but I had almond flour. Used my 9" square springform to bake two layers and cut them to form nice and even squares. My cakes rose beautifully but as my cakes have a habit of falling...these did too... On to the next part, the buttercream! "Ceci n'est pas une crème de beurre"

This is not buttercream. Of course I should have done it the way I was told to in the recipe but no, I thought better of it and did it my way.... substituted the buttercream (been there, done that, got my hips to prove it!) for a pistachio flavoured pastry cream. Which was, if I may say so, an excellent idea. Granted: poor execution, but the idea on itself was excellent. Flavour as well. Excellent. Added a tiny bit of fresh mint. Excellent. Consistency not so much. Hence skiddy cake.
My syrup was -and still is- great, I squashed a cantaloupe melon with a fork, extracted the juice and made the syrup with the juice, some honey and sugar and a dash of alcohol. Good!

The chocolate mousse went without a hitch and the white chocolate glaze (no, I didn't use a double boiler) was smooth and silky....however...you knew there was a "however" coming. The point of no return in adding a white chocolate glaze is quite eh, hard to distinguish. Too soon and you'll have a runny mess trickling down the sides of your cake, too late and there's a gloppy yellowish mess on top of same cake. Difficult. I invented some card board borders with the help of son nr. 1 to keep the glaze on top, no pictures too messy. Lots of fingerlicking and scooping.

From the scraps of the cut cake layers and the help of a ring I formed my Kodak Opportunity..... I could have posted this pic alone and you would have never known...

Yessss! A whiter shade of pale! Halleluja!

Ping!! Coin of knowledge: did you know La Joconde is another name for the Mona Lisa? I didn't!
Ping!! Thanks to my baking buddies in arms Tanna and Ilva, we had fun, moose and aria's in our kitchens!