Daring Bakers: Opera Cake

This month's Daring Bakers challenge was an Opera Cake, but with a slight twist. Traditionally made with coffee and lots of chocolate, this recipe was going for more of a springtime pastel look and taste. The birthday boy, my friend Michael, requested mint and chocolate. To kind of compromise this with the no-chocolate stipulation, I avoided using actual chocolate, but instead made the simple syrup component with a chocolate extract. The syrup was absorbed into the almond cake layers of the Opera Cake, imparting a hint of chocolateyness, but no dark color. I haven't used this extract much, so it was interesting to see the effect it had. For peppermint, I infused dry peppermint leaves into heavy cream, whipped the cream, and incorporated it into the white chocolate mousse layer. I had a really hard time whipping the cream, which should be really simple. I broke it twice and had to go out to buy more. Could some chemical in the peppermint interfere with whipping? I'll have to look it up. Also mixed just a bit of the mousse into the buttercream for a little extra flavor. All in all, pretty successful. I don't think anybody at the birthday party complained.

Daring Bakers: Cheesecake Pops

The latest Daring Bakers challenge: Cheesecake Pops. Not my favorite cheesecake recipe of all time, but a really cute concept. Clever method to freeze the pops after forming and stabbing them to make them sturdy enough to handle for dipping/decorating. I opted to half-dip them in milk chocolate and half-dip them in dark chocolate. I used Guittard, courtesy of Eclipse. I also topped them with graham cracker crumbs, to better tie in with actual cheesecake. Did a few with Maldon sea salt, because why not? Took some to a picnic potluck and the rest into work, where they were hoarded jealously.

Daring Bakers: Perfect Party Cake

This was my second challenge from the Daring Bakers site and, lo and behold, I already owned the book that the recipe was from. The Perfect Party Cake is from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. The cake part was a very nice, basic white cake, with a tiny bit of a lemon flavor. The filling in the recipe is raspberry jam, but I had a random jar of sour cherry and rhubarb jam that worked out really well. The really new part for me was the buttercream, which I think was a Swiss buttercream, rather than the Italian style I usually make. With the Italian buttercream, you whip egg whites and gently pour in hot, melted sugar. With this recipe, the sugar and egg whites are stirred together over a double boiler and then whipped. For both methods, you finish it off with tons and tons of butter. I really liked this recipe. It was a bit less involved to execute and I thought the resulting buttercream was exceptionally creamy and non-greasy. I put the stripey pattern on the sides with my new cake comb and then Will helped me come up with the pink sugar (reduced cranberry juice tossed with sugar) to decorate the top. I took the cake into work the next day and it didn't take long for it to disappear.

Chocolate Souffle Cake

This one is from a month or two ago. My condo's social committee had a chocolate-themed potluck event. Well, I couldn't pass that up. And, of course, I had to impress, but also didn't have time to shop for ingredients. I got this recipe from the Tartine Bakery cookbook. (Incidentally, I'm pretty psyched to visit the actual bakery in SF next week.) It's a really interesting recipe. Flourless chocolate cake, so it's super rich. Unlike other flourless chocolate cakes, though, it's souffled, meaning whipped egg whites are folded in right before baking, which give it a lot of lightness and volume when the air bubbles expand in the oven. There's also a step of whipping the egg yolks and folding that in. Crazy. Wasn't sure what to do with the presentation. That's something I need to get better at. Anyway, it turned out to be practically the only homemade thing at the party. Went over very well, I'd say.

Caramel Almond Tart

Had friends over on Sunday and made this Caramel Almond Tart from David Lebovitz's blog, originally from Chez Panisse. I followed the directions exactly, heating the cream and sugar until it foamed up, then adding the almonds and amaretto, but it didn't seem to react as described. Maybe I should have cooked it on the stove longer to darken/thicken the caramel? It was pretty wet when it went into the oven and took longer to bake than predicted, but it all seemed to work out find in the end. Crispy and buttery and almondy and yum. Nobody complained.