The buttercream is sweetly light and compliments the smooth dark chocolate ganache perfectly. I also chose to adorn the cake with a drippy dark chocolate glaze and decorated the top with a gilded Colombian rose.Įach bite of this French Opera Cake is a dreamy affair. The cake layers are soaked in an espresso and liqueur spiked syrup then stacked into a sky-high tower, sandwiching alternating layers of dark chocolate ganache and coffee french buttercream. The French Opera Cake is comprised of six light and fluffy layers of espresso flavoured sponge. As you know, I do have a thing for espresso in baking - it seems to reign throughout my baking at the moment. This cake - I tell you, is amazingly good. I find it a perfect riff on the classic recipe. It holds all the flavours of the traditional opera cake too. It’s round but still layered - and it comes together like a dream. I have made several renditions of traditional opera cake’s in the past - but I do love how Tessa has turned the usually finicky french cake into a more user friendly version. This French Opera Cake is hidden among the pages of Layered, and it’s the one I was immediately drawn to. I am so enamoured by its glossy pages, decadent cakes and charming photography. And I would just like to begin by saying how beautiful the book is. I have always been an admirer of Tessa’s amazingly perfect cakes, and have been eagerly anticipating the release of Layeredfor some time. Which is just what Tessa Huff's (from Style Sweet CA ), new cookbook, Layered - makes me want to do. ( check out her blog, if you haven’t already)! It’s not rare for me to fall in love with cookbooks, but it is rare for me to want to make every recipe out of a single book.

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” - Leonardo da Vinci

French opera cake near me