Daring Bakers: Opera Cake

My second challenge for the Daring Bakers is gateau l'opera or opera cake. A multi-layered cake involving jaconde, a nut-based biscuit, buttercream, mousse, and a ganache glaze. I've never made this before, but I've certainly had it at some point in my life.

The recipe is quite long, so I won't reprint it here. It was based on the opera cake recipes in Dorie Greenspan's Paris Sweets and Tish Boyle/Timothy Moriarty's Chocolate Passion. May's challenge involved "light" colors and flavors. While opera cake is traditionally chocolate, the challenge required the DBs to look to non-chocolate flavorings. I decided to stick to the path of least resistance. The challenge recipe already used almonds, vanilla, and white chocolate, so I stuck to those flavors and added fresh strawberries. When I baked this, strawberries were running for $0.77 to $1.35 a quart. That's local Carlsbad strawberries, so the season was clearly in full-swing.

My favorite part of this challenge was the jaconde. I had tons of almonds on hand, which was a convenient coincidence. The cake is nutty and rich, although it came out too thin for me. I used two half-sheet cookie sheets, which is slightly larger than the jelly roll pans required in the recipe.

Next time, I will put all of the batter into one sheet pan, cut it into three pieces, and end up with a smaller cake. The almond meal is combined with whole eggs and sugar, then folded into whipped egg whites.

The beginning of folding... turned out a lot better than it looks!

The buttercream required a boiled sugar syrup that is cooked to 225 degrees F. I let mine go to 240 degrees F while I took this picture:

Turned out fine. The hot syrup is poured into eggs and egg yolks while they're being whipped in a mixer. There was a whole vanilla bean's worth of seeds in the syrup and I amped up the vanilla flavor by adding extract on top of the bean. Butter is added to the egg/syrup mixture to complete the buttercream. The end result is something like a pastry cream, with the extra vanilla being a nice touch.

I didn't find this recipe difficult, just time-consuming. The great thing about it was that all of the individual components could be made one at a time, then assembled later. So, I spaced it over a week in preparation for a belated Mother's Day in LA (Mom wanted to celebrate a week after Mom's Day proper, to avoid crowds).

Assembly was fairly easy. The jaconde was brushed with a simple syrup, which was flavored with limoncello, then covered with buttercream and strawberry slices (see first photo). This step was repeated once more, then topped with the last layer of jaconde. After that came the white chocolate mousse, which consisted of white chocolate melted with some heavy cream, then folded into whipped cream. After that, a white chocolate glaze was poured on top.

White chocolate overkill.

I would have thinned out the ganache glaze a little more, because it hardened quite a bit, making it like a white chocolate bar on top of a cake. Too much and too sweet. I would have also changed the mousse to a light lemon to bring out more of the strawberries.

The edges were trimmed off with a sharp knife to produce the final product. The too-thin jaconde led to sagging corners where the cake was thinnest. Hence, the slope of the cake.

Closer look at the layers.

Another DB challenge done! I can't wait for June's challenge. A big thank you to Ivonne, Lisa, Fran, and Shea for hosting!

And of course, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, Mom! I love you!

Daring Bakers: Cheesecake Pops

I am so excited to be part of the April class of Daring Bakers. My first challenge was a mixture of old and new. I've made cheesecakes before, but it's been a while. I have a smashing lemon cheesecake recipe that was a hit during '06-'07, but I made it so often that I tired of it and stopped. I haven't made it in over a year, so my cheesecake skills are a little rusty. On the "new" side, I don't have a lot of experience with chocolate, so working with tempered chocolate is good practice for me.

Like Sharon's recent project, I made a mistake that proved to be quite fortuitous. Before I elaborate, here's the original recipe:

Cheesecake Pops (from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O'Connor)

Makes 30 – 40 Pops

Ingredients

5 8-oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature

2 cups sugar

¼ cup all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

5 large eggs

2 egg yolks

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

¼ cup heavy cream

Boiling water as needed

Thirty to forty 8-inch lollipop sticks

1 pound chocolate (can use various mixtures of dark, milk, white or use confectionary coatings), finely chopped

2 tablespoons vegetable shortening

Assorted decorations such as chopped nuts, colored jimmies, crushed peppermints, mini chocolate chips, sanding sugars, dragees - Optional

Procedure

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil.

In a large bowl, beat (low speed on a mixer) together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream. Keep the speed low.

Grease a 10-inch cake pan, and pour the batter into it. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes.

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.

When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat the chocolate and shortening, stirring often, until completely smooth. Alternately, you can microwave the same amount of chocolate coating pieces on high at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. Roll the pops quickly in decorations, if using. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.

What did I do wrong? I lost my patience and accidentally overbaked. Note that the baking time is supposed to take 35-40 minutes. From a lot of reports from other DBs who had finished the challenge, the baking was taking much longer. I baked it for 45 minutes, only to find a creamy soup. I left it for another 30 minutes to find it firming, but still very loose. I glared at it, then set the timer for 30 more minutes and went to take a shower.

Yes, I know that's a mistake.

However, it did work out in my favor as the overbaking resulted in a firm consistency that required almost no refrigeration before scooping. It also didn't seem to affect the final product, as the cake was still quite creamy. So, I started scooping, put it in the fridge for 15 minutes after I reached the middle of the cake, and was able to freeze the pops right away.

The rules required that we follow the cheesecake recipe (exemption for allergies and dietary restrictions), but we could use whatever dip/decoration we wanted. As previously mentioned, I have a weakness for Cheesecake Factory's Adam's Peanut Butter Fudge Ripple. To recreate the flavors, I mixed peanut butter into the melted chocolate and dipped the pop in crushed Butterfingers.

Mixing the peanut butter was a bit of a gamble as I wasn't sure whether the chocolate would still harden into shells. I started with a half portion of the dip. Using my kitchen scale, I weighed out 5 oz. dark chocolate, then brought it up to 8 oz. with peanut butter. Add 1 tbsp. of shortening and melt the whole mixture in a bowl placed over a pot of simmering water. Luckily, it turned out beautifully.

The other change I made was the sticks. Instead of using lollipop sticks, I decided to use Pocky sticks. They're edible and fun. Hehe.

Two downsides: chocolate melting on the fingers and the sticks not being too strong. I have a lot of shortened sticks.

The sticks taste a lot like the Adam's Peanut Butter Fudge Ripple and are really rich and decadent. I loved them and they'll make a great party treat. Right now, however, I need help with the 50+ pops. Anyone want some?