The Case of the Single Note Opera

Firstly, I'd have to apologize for so late to post this challenge. truth be told, I ran into some unforeseen circumstances, I'm forced to postpone making the cake. Hope I can still make it.

On to the cake,

I had been looking forward to bake this one in years ever since I saw them in the bakeries! I even secretly wanted to propose the recipe for the upcoming challenges, but it seems like Ivonne and Lisa have already thought of it first, huhu... and Fran and Shea is the hosts too. :)

the whole mess :)

I halved the recipe provided and wanted to add orange and mango flavor to the cake. however, mangoes seems to be unavailable this time of year so I proceed with only oranges. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, instead of two flavors infused into the cake I just used one contrary with most of the other bakers :)

clearer one

The orange buttercream was certainly very intense!!
It turn out so good, even my mother liked it (and thats something as my mum hates buttercream) I reduced the syrup to minimize the sweetness as I don't want the cake to be too sweet. through we are still left with some excess after assembling the cake. I just used it like a jam preserve on white bread and it was awesome! the cake was what I had expected. a bit spongy and a bit dry to absorb all those syrup.

here's a list of what I used

Jaconde
115g ground almonds
15g sugar
3 egg whites
3 eggs
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup flour
3 tbs butter

Buttercream
100g butter
1 egg
vanilla
1/4 cup orange juice
zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup sugar

Syrup
zest of 1 orange
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 sugar

chocolate ganache
3 bars (150g) white chocolate
50 ml cream


The assembly of the cake was easy enough through I had a bit of a problem while spreading the white chocolate mixture. iIt hardens as soon as it touches the cake!! Well thats exaggerating, but yea, I didn't manage to spread the chocolate evenly on the cake. I will learn from this. this challenge have been a great one. I got my chance to make one creamy buttercream and even learn a bit about the spreading technique. Through the batter was really hard to spread to begin with. It was so thick, I thought it won't ever rise. Thank God it did. :) Maybe should add more orange juice or another egg??

and definately I should make more buttercream to practice spreading? hmmm.. :P


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something I made to release some stress. Baking is so therapeutic!