Daring Bakers - Opera Cake

Yes… another month has passed and its time for the next installment of the Daring Bakers Challenge.
This month it is Opera cake.
We were given instructions: it had to be white. No chocolate or coffee or dark colours. Why? Because its spring and everything is fresh & light. Well maybe in the northern hemisphere. But half the world is actually in the southern hemisphere and its autumn here. But I have stuck to the theme and kept it light & white & seasonal.
An Opera cake is a cake that is made up (usually) of five components: a jaconde (a cake layer), a syrup (to moisten the jaconde), a buttercream (to fill some of the layers), a ganache (to top the final cake layer) and a glaze (to cover the final layer of cake or of ganache). We were given a bit of leeway with the type of nut used in the jaconde. I went with a macadamia nut. Freshly cracked macadamias, coarsely ground to give some texture to the cake. This turned out quite nicely with a nice light colour and delicious flavour. The jaconde was then bathed in a syrup to give it some moisture. I had decided that mandarin was going to be the main flavour for my Opera cake. So the zest of the mandarin was used in the ganache and the juice was used in the syrup. As neither Paul nor myself are fans of the dreaded “buttercream” (read cholesterol, waistline spread, blocked arteries) I chose to go with a lighter vanilla ricotta cream for the layers. The only problem I had in assembling the cake was the glaze. It kept wanting to drip down the sides of the cake. Letting it cool slightly helped resolve that problem but didn’t give a mirror like finish to the cake. Oh well, can’t have everything (but I do try).

End result was a cake which I was very pleased with. Light & white with flecks of orangey/gold. And also had Paul’s approval (no mean feat!).
So another Daring Bakers Challenge is completed & consumed. What will be next?????

Daring Bakers - Yule Log

This was a totally new experience for me. My family never had Yule logs, & I have actually never tasted one either, so I guess I had nothing to compare this recipe to. Paul on the other hand, has made logs before, so his supervision was greatly appreciated. There were a few hiccups along the way, but I succeeded.
The first of these was the baking tray. I thought the one we had was the right size. That is until I had made the sponge mixture & was about to pour it into the tray. My esteemed partner advised me to measure the tray as he thought it was too small. He was right. It was 10x12 rather than the 10x15 (as stated in the recipe). I made the full amount anyway, then sliced it in half to make 2 slightly thinner sponges.
My second stumbling block was the buttercream. It curdled. Again Paul came to my rescue with the solution which saved the day (& a lot of buttercream). He advised whipping an amount of butter (I only had 50g left) then very slowly adding the curdled mixture a spoon at a time to the whipped butter and incorporating it thoroughly before adding the next spoonful. It worked.
Onto the sponge I spread a brandy syrup mixture, peach jam, vanilla buttercream and a dusting of cocoa powder. It was then rolled. The remaining buttercream was flavoured with coffee and applied to the log.
I decided to go with the meringue mushroom option & stuck the stems onto the caps with some buttercream and, as its summer here in Australia, I then added a few flowers for decoration.
It worked marvelously & even Paul was impressed.