Daring Bakers Go To The Opera!

It is a fresh start to the Daring Bakers this month, as we've gotten our own website! If you go www.thedaringbakers.com, you'll find our new forum, where non-Daring Bakers and Daring Bakers alike can discuss their favorite topic: food. However, to view the Daring Bakers forum for the challenge of the month, you must first become a Daring Baker, and the details are explained on the website. So, if you've been lurking and want to join, then hop to it my friend!

This month's challenge had me quite intimidated. First of all, our lovely co-founders of the Daring Bakers, Ivonne of the blog Cream Puffs in Venice, and Lis of the blog La Mia Cucina, were hosting this month's challenge, so I knew it was going to be a doozy. Second, when they announced the challenge and that it would be a French pastry, I got really nervous, because I know how painstakingly intricate French pastry making is. And thirdly, the recipe itself blew me away: FIVE pages of recipe, and that's at 10 pt font, too. I knew I had my work cut out for me, indeed.

I won't post the recipe here, as it is quite long and I don't want your eyes to turn square just reading it here! If you hop on over to either Ivonne or Lis's blogs (in the blogroll) you'll be able to find it there.

The only trouble I had with this recipe was that I burnt one of my cakes. Lucky for me, I was able to improvise by halving the rest of the recipe, since I made the cakes first. I just made a mini-Opera cake instead!

I feared that the cake would turn out tasting like cardboard or too sweet or not have enough flavor, but it was none of those things. I chose to make my syrup with Grand Marnier liquer, and added some lemon and lime juice to my buttercream in order to give it some punch and pizzazz. I'd have to say that my favorite part, though, was the white chocolate glaze, it was so yummy. I'm a big fan of white chocolate, and for some reason, it always reminds me of Easter, since my mom used to always get me white chocolate Easter bunnies every year. I took this lovely cake to dinner with my mother in-law and some of her friends and extended family, and it went over really well. And it never fails that when I serve a Daring Bakers challenge to my family, they always end up asking for the recipe, and this was no exception!

The recipe is a wee bit time consuming, so it's probably easier to take it easy and go one step at a time, but it's really worth it for the oohs and aahs you'll get. Enjoy!

~Mehgan~