Daring Bakers Challenge: Opera Cake!

After months of seeing Hannah of Bittersweet and Jessie of Cakespy post their delicious concoctions from the Daring Bakers Challenge, and more recently from Shellyfish from Musings from the Fishbowl, and Bex from How to Feed a Vegan, I decided to get in on the baking action with my first challenge. At the unveiling of this month's challenge, I was both nervous and excited. As I read the challenge description for opera cake, I couldn't help but hum Toreador! (if you've heard Carmen, you will of course be adding the extra oomph to the end) I have certainly never attempted, or even eaten, an opera cake. But I've seen them, oh yes. Layers of almond cake with decadent coffee buttercream and chocolate mousse and glaze. It is enough to make a chocolate lover bust out in song (opera, of course). But the rules specified that this opera cake was to be light in color and in flavor. Although this was initially a bit disappointing, I knew that this was why I joined Daring Bakers... I make chocolate stuff all the time. I needed to attempt something new. So here it is, my Raspberry Lemon Opera Cake with a white chocolate drizzle (I am hearing Entre'Act in my head, an appropriate entrance that I also used for my recent walk down the aisle).
Being an "alternative" daring baker (the recipe we were given was a far cry from being vegan, I think there was something like 12+ eggs!), I had to change a few things and used different recipes for pretty much everything except the syrup that I soaked the cake in. Let's start with the jaconde, aka, the cake. I used the almond cupcake recipe from VCTOTW, because really, that little book has never failed me. I increased the almond meal for a more pronounced almond flavor, used raspberry soy yogurt (although I don't think you could really tell), and baked it in a jelly roll pan to produce three layers of cake. After cooling and gently removing the cake from the pan and cutting into three rectangles, each layer got a healthy drizzle of lemon simple syrup before the next element was added....
Buttercream! Raspberry buttercream that is. I used a raspberry syrup I found at our mega-liquor store (Spec's for those of you in the Houston area) as the liquid for a traditional vegan buttercream. I chose not to use any shortening since no piping was involved and I could afford a softer frosting consistency. Each layer of buttercream was topped with chopped fresh raspberries, adding both extra flavor and color.
The final two layers were the greatest challenge, a mousse and to finish it off, a glaze. In order to bring out the lemon flavor a bit more, I decided to make a lemon mousse. I used a silken tofu base, fresh lemon juice, lemon extract, sugar, vanilla, and some cream cheese to help it set a bit. I was quite pleased that there was some leftover after slathering it on the cake, the rest of the afternoon I happily dipped my finger in the food processor bowl until it was gone.
The white chocolate glaze I approached with much caution. Back in December I had a disaster trying to make a ganache out of some vegan white chocolate chips, and ended up wasting an entire bag. But I did manage to get enough white chocolate to drizzle (never posted about it, but you can see the cake here), so that's what I did this time. Much to my surprise, it went much smoother (literally!) than I had anticipated! It also provided just enough embellishment on the cake that all it needed was a few fresh raspberries for garnish.

It may not be the prettiest opera cake (I wish my edges had been a little cleaner), but let me tell you, it tasted divine. I especially loved the bites where I could squeeze an additional fresh raspberry on my fork. Totally worth the time, effort, and thought. Now I can't wait to see what next month's challenge is!
Be sure to check out other daring baker posts, listed on their blogroll.