A Mothers Day Opera

It's always a makes life easier when I can combine two jobs into one. Especially in the kitchen. Thats why I was glad when the latest Daring Bakers challange coincided with Mothers Day.

So thanks to Shea, Fran, Ivonne and Liz for their great choice of challange.

And their choice was... L'Opera cake.

Opera cake is a cake that origionated in France in the early 1900's involving serveral layers of jaconde (almond sponge) coated with a sugar syrup, filled with buttercream, topped with mousse and glazed. While traditionally Opera cakes are chocolate and coffee flavoured, our lovely hosts chose to challenge us all by making them light in both colour and flavour; no dark chocolate or coffe here.

If you think that's challanging you should try burning off the callories afterwards.

My choice of flavour was ruby grapefruit, I thought that the citrus might break up the white chocolate buttercream and mousse and glaze.

I candied grapefruit peal and made candy hearts to top the cake and coloured the glaze.

My opinion of the cake? Pretty, but I don't like white chocolate, and I'm not a big fan of buttercream either. The combination of white chocolate and buttercream was really over-sweet, overpowering the flavours of the jaconde, which was delicious by it's self.

Would I make it again? Not in white chocolate, but I'd love to try the traditional version.

So many Daring bakers have come up with some really beautiful cakes and some great flavours too. You should check them out. You can see the recipe here