The "Daring Bakers" is an online baking group that sponsors a baking challenge every month. If you're interested in baking and challenging yourself, this is a great group to join. The group is filled with bakers with a range of skills from novices to professional bakers. I'm a newbie to the group and this is my first challenge ever!
May's challenge was to make a "spring" opera cake. Instead of creating a typical chocolate opera cake, the challenge involved having to make it "spring"-like by only using light colors. So as much as I detest white chocolate, I used it for the recipe. My immature view of white chocolate that it's pseudo chocolate that is not doing a good job trying to disguise itself as chocolate.
An opera cake consists of five layers: cake, a simple syrup, buttercream, ganache, and a glaze. This is the first challenge I have participated in and was quite overwhelmed with the challenge. I've consumed an opera cake before, but had never made it.
Here's pictures of my guava opera cake decorated for spring. I was trying to go for a cherry blossom theme to my cake. I made a vanilla simple syrup and added guava paste to the buttercream. The guava taste was quite faint so what I made was really a pink vanilla frosting opera cake.
Also, about the butter cream it was great when I first made it. I stored it in the fridge overnight and then when I tried to whip it back up the next day the emulsion broke a little bit. So for this recipe I'd suggest making and using the buttercream on the same day you're assembling the cake.
Well, I completed my very first challenge. I will be looking to these other Daring Bakers for inspiration: Clumbsy Cookie's Mango Coconut Cake, No Recipes' Fire and Ice Cake, The Feast Within's Cake , and Pretty Tasty Cakes' Apricot Pistachio cake. There are so many creative bakers there that make beautiful cakes! For the next challenge I will work towards creating beautiful pieces too!
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