Opera~

I was extremely excited today..

It's my baking class day, finally.. after it postponing twice since er, April? Yep, that long!

We only did 1 cake for the whole of 3 plus hours for this class, taught by a very talented lady, Lynn at her beautiful house.



It was a hands on class, for everything but ingredients were prepared in advance or else, it'd definitely be more than 4 hours!

Also, this was a semi private class, 2 of us in total. I like it this way actually but very expensive!


Yes, i wrote those words myself. Awesome yeah? *thick skin* But not the letter 'O' though. Heh.

I never thought i could do it? Hmm well, i've never tried doing it before actually but really, i didn't think and never thought i could, at all! To be fair, we did practise it on the tray for 2-3 times to get the rough idea though *wink* :)

Opera~ :

Although many believe that Dalloyau was the first to have come up with the recipe, known as L'Opéra, it was Louis Clichy who debuted this cake at the 1903 Exposition Culinaire in Paris with his own name emblazoned across the top.

Regardless of who created it, the basic components of Opéra are joconde biscuit soaked in coffee and cognac flavored syrup, layered between coffee flavored butter cream and chocolate ganache. It is traditionally covered with pâte à glacer in a shiny mirror surface with simply the word Opéra written across. Sometimes it’s adorned with a few specks of gold leaves, but the overall effect is very minimalist. This is a cake that has enough flavors to speak for itself that no frivolous decoration is needed.

A good Opéra needs to be very low in height.

From Lynn.



See the layering? Spectacular isn't it? The sponge isn't chocolate sponge cake at all. It's the joconde biscuits soaked with coffee, cognac syrup. Extremely time consuming albeit it was just brushing the syrup onto it.

Okay, i measured mine. It's around 2.5cm ;)

To be honest, i don't think i'd do this cake at home or rather at all. Too much work!

1 cake = 3.5 hours?

No way!

Unless i'm like super free that day with the boys AWAY. That, i think.. it's the most crucial part in my decision making whether to bake the cake or not. Lol.

Furthermore, the amount of stuff to wash after that isn't just Bukit Timah Hill, it's Mount Everest!

However, even though i'm not gonna bake this cake in the future, i learned quite a bit in the class, eg : making paper cone for writing! Haha :PpP

Overall, i really enjoyed my class but because it's so expensive, i don't think i could go for another class anymore unless i've got sponsors! Grin..

Or if my cake business is doing extremely well that month, say... selling 15 cakes in a month? Then perhaps i could sign up for another class to perfect my skills! :P

Now.. time for cake cutting and get fat!

ps: today is 'not on diet' day. Were snacking throughout the class with all the cake bits that were being sliced away. Terrible ah..