- Hey, I'm John Kanell,
and today on "Peppy Kitchen,"
we're making an elegant, amazing opera cake.
So let's get started.
First off, I'm cracking four eggs into a big bowl.
I also preheated my oven to 475 fahrenheit,
and I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper.
It's all buttered and floured.
I gotta tell you,
this cake is a little bit intimidating when you see it,
it looks like the fanciest French dessert,
with beautiful layers of various things happening.
A lot of people write "opera" on top of each piece,
which I learned to do.
It's actually pretty fun.
Takes you back to your cursive days in elementary.
I'm mixing up four eggs in a big bowl
until they're nice and foamy.
The sponge of this cake has no leavening agents.
All of the lift comes from eggs that are inflated
with all little bubbles in the oven.
I just wanna say that because it is so delicious,
you know,
baking powder and baking soda just don't taste good,
so when you leaven a cake without them, oh my God,
the results are amazing.
My eggs are foamy.
I'm gonna add in 125 grams of almond flour.
That's 1 1/4 cups.
I also want 3/4 of a cup of confectionary sugar,
gonna use my scale for that part.
90 grams of powdered sugar.
Sift your powdered sugar in.
This cake was invented in 1955
by the famous French pastry chef Cyriaque Gavillon,
at the Dalloyau Shop,
which was like the pastry shop that had been in business
since the 1600s.
It served the court of Versailles.
It's called the opera cake because his wife tasted it,
and said it reminded her of the Paris opera,
because it was so sophisticated and amazing.
I'm mixing this on medium speed for about three minutes,
until I have a beautiful pale color.
I wanna mix some air into here right now.
And you'll notice there's no wheat flour in here yet,
just the almond flour.
Almond flour doesn't have any gluten,
so you can mix it as much as you want,
it won't change the consistency of the cake.
When we add the flour in,
we'll mix it until it's just combined.
Right now I'm gonna add in my all-purpose flour,
and so I want 30 grams, that's 1/4 of a cup.
This is just a little bit of flour
to give our cake some structure.
Now let's just fold that in.
Most of the lift for this cake
will come from beaten egg whites that will fold in,
and it is a delicate, amazing affair.
Time to separate three room-temperature eggs.
The buttercream for this cake is a French buttercream,
which is one of my all-time favorites.
I don't get to make it very much,
but it's a custard-based buttercream, basically,
because you're using egg yolks.
We're gonna get our egg whites nice and frosty
by mixing them on high.
Now I'm adding in two tablespoons of sugar,
and I wanna mix this for about three minutes,
until nice, beautiful, stiff peaks form.
And as you can see,
we're not using a ton of sugar in the cake.
It's a perfectly balanced affair,
with a buttercream,
a coffee syrup,
and chocolate.
This cake was designed to have each bite
give you a complete taste,
so it's wonderful.
Is this amazing?
That is a nice stiff peak. Okay.
And now we're gonna fold this amazing bit of egg whites
into the batter in three batches.
So the first batch is really just to lighten it up.
You're gonna sacrifice a lot of those air bubbles.
You see the color change immediately,
and it starts to lighten,
but you don't wanna dump all of the egg whites
in at one time,
it just makes folding difficult,
and you don't have the same light consistency you need
for a sponge like this.
Batch two, and our final batch.
Just fold that right in.
The final bit of richness
comes from three tablespoons of melted butter,
and you fold that in as well.
It really adds a little bit extra to the cake,
and prevents it from tasting dry at all.
Grab your 11- by 17-inch baking sheet,
that has been prepared with parchment on the bottom.
Now we're gonna pour this into our pan,
and a very important step is to smooth it out.
So grab either an offset spatula,
or you can use your normal spatula,
and we're gonna level this out, 'cause it bakes so fast.
I'm doing a good job leveling this out,
and I wanna say that when you put this into the oven,
you could rotate it halfway through
if your oven has hotspots.
And I'm being very gentle leveling it out,
'cause I don't wanna break up all the air bubbles
that I had beat into this,
but you want it to be nice and flat.
This goes into the oven 425 fahrenheit
for 10 to 12 minutes until it's lightly golden,
and springy to the touch.
Cake's outta the oven,
and I wanna show you, you're gonna use a small knife,
and just run it along the edge to loosen the cake up,
and then it cools down really fast.
We're gonna invert this onto a wire rack,
remove the paper.
This can just hang out and finish cooling completely,
while we make everything else,
starting with the coffee syrup.
While the cake baked, I made some espresso,
but you could also use 1/4 cup of water,
and two teaspoons of instant espresso powder.
Into a small saucepan,
I'm adding 1/4 cup of espresso,
one quarter cup of sugar,
and one quarter cup of brandy.
So this is a nice cognac,
but you could use any brandy for this.
I'm placing this over a medium heat, stir occasionally,
and bring it to a simmer.
I just want the sugar to melt.
I don't wanna cook this down into like a thick syrup.
So you can see there's sugar lurking at the bottom.
We just wanna dissolve that,
and evaporate just a tiny bit of water from this.
If you wanna make this without the brandy,
you could use almost 1/4 cup of water,
a couple of teaspoons of vanilla,
and if you want, even a teaspoon of rum extract,
that should give you like a similar depth of flavor.
The sugar is all dissolved.
I'm gonna take this off heat and set it aside.
And now we're gonna make an amazing chocolate glaze.
I have two inches of water coming to a simmer in a pot.
I'm gonna finely chop eight ounces of semi-sweet chocolate.
Try and use a nice chocolate for this recipe.
You can really taste the difference.
I'm giving this a nice, fine chop,
so it melts really easily.
I also want seven tablespoons of butter.
I think that's 100 grams.
We're gonna cut it into pieces.
I'm popping my bowl over heat.
Chocolate goes right in there,
along with all of our butter.
Break the butter up.
You're gonna mix this up,
and you want the chocolate to be almost all melted,
before you take it off heat.
I usually don't wait for every little last bit to melt,
because it makes it super hot,
and residual heat will finish melting any little bits
before you need the chocolate.
Take us off heat.
This gets set aside to cool
until it's a nice spreadable consistency.
In the meantime, we're gonna make our last component,
which is an amazing French buttercream infused with coffee.
Ah, it's so good.
Do not be intimidated by French buttercream.
It is mind-bendingly delicious,
and is very straightforward.
This is coffee-flavored,
so my first step is to add one tablespoon of water
into two teaspoons of instant espresso powder.
This is just gonna give us a very concentrated coffee flavor
without adding too much liquid,
which is why we're not using just espresso right now.
We have three egg yolks from before,
I need three more.
So I'm gonna separate these whites out.
These are extra egg whites.
You could freeze them for later
and make meringues with them.
Now we're gonna grab a small pan or pot.
This goes over heat,
but first we're gonna add 1/2 a cup,
plus two tablespoons of sugar,
it's 125 grams.
Right into the pot.
Plus two tablespoons, one and two.
I'm also adding in three tablespoons of water.
Gonna give that a little swirl,
place it over medium heat.
I also have a pastry brush and some water.
This is an optional step,
but you can just wash the sides of your pot down,
so that aren't any granules of sugar on the wall
that can scorch.
I want my sugar to be 238, 240.
That's the softball stage.
It's not gonna be a hard caramel that crystallizes
into like a rock.
Using my thermometer, so I can be exact about it,
but if you don't have one,
some people can eyeball it,
better safe to use the cold water test.
So you just have a glass of cold water.
You get a little spoonful and you drop the sugar in there.
It should form like sap, basically,
which tells you it's at the right stage.
If it got too hot, it'll form a hard ball.
And if it dissolves, it means it's not ready yet.
While my sugar comes to a boil,
I'm adding my egg yolks into my stand mixer,
and I wanna beat this on high,
until they get like a nice pale color.
This thickened up and is pale yellow.
This is at 240.
So now running on medium speed,
carefully pour this in a steady stream.
Be very careful that hot, hot sugar
is gonna cook the egg yolks and stabilize them,
and create an amazing custard
that you mix butter into for this amazing buttercream.
Just really quickly,
this can splatter on the wall of your mixer.
That's fine.
It becomes kind of like thick sap.
It's still soft, 'cause it was the correct temperature.
It's the softball stage.
I just wanna scrape this down so it mixes in well.
I'm gonna mix this on medium high,
until it is very stiff, and it's gathering around the whisk.
You're gonna see the consistency really changes.
It's also gonna cool down because it is fiery hot right now.
And we can't add the butter in
until it's closer to room temperature.
Your mixture is gonna be running for about 10 minutes now.
Okay. Aren't you glad you're not doing that by hand?
It's really thickened up a lot.
It's not like a meringue, where it's like,
at a stiff peak stage,
but it has a lot of structure.
And when we add the butter to this,
it's gonna be really, really nice.
So my egg yolk mixture has thickened up considerably,
and most importantly, it's room temperature.
Now we're gonna add one cup or 226 grams of butter,
a tablespoon at a time.
My butter is very soft.
If your butter is a bit firmer,
just break it up in your fingers,
or warm it in the microwave on half power for a few seconds.
And your buttercream will get looser
when you add the butter in,
but it'll come back in the whipping process,
so don't worry about it.
Scrape the bowl down,
run this for just a few minutes
so that everything can come together,
and be a beautiful consistency.
No big pieces of butter are gonna be left.
Once the consistency is right,
we're gonna drizzle in our coffee mixtures.
Just drizzle it in slowly while the mixer runs.
Oh my gosh, look at this.
It looks beautiful.
I love this coffee color.
My buttercream is done.
The coffee syrup is done.
The cake is done.
We are ready to start assembling.
It's so exciting.
This is a lot of cake.
We're gonna cut it into some pieces,
but it's a very specific cut.
So I wanna walk you through it.
I'm cutting a four-inch strip off of the long side,
so now I have a big, long rectangle,
and a big kind of wide rectangle too.
Then I'm gonna cut those in half.
16.
It's about eight inches.
So now I have these two rectangles.
There we go.
Now I have two skinny rectangles,
and two fattish rectangles.
You're gonna wanna assemble your cake
on whatever you're gonna store it, or present it on.
So it could just be on a cutting board.
I have a little ceramic board that is just the right size.
Then don't worry if there are some like imperfections,
because we're gonna trim this after it's all assembled.
So at the very end, we'll trim it out,
and it'll look gorgeous.
Now I'm gonna get a third of this coffee mixture,
and drizzle and brush it over the top.
I wanna soak the cake in it.
Do not be stingy with this coffee brandy mixture,
because it is giving you so much flavor to the cake.
Now we're gonna add half
of our amazing coffee French buttercream
on top of this cake.
Spread this into an even layer all over, so.
This is gonna be like a nice, fairly thick layer
of buttercream, about as thick as the cake itself.
Even if you did a really good job leveling your cake,
chances are, it might have a little bit of a wave to it,
so the buttercream can fix that.
Now get these two skinny rectangles and place them on top.
That's our second layer.
And don't worry about any like crack showing in the middle,
because there's a third perfect layer to go on top.
We're gonna brush over half of the remaining coffee mixture.
Liberal brushing, nicely soaked in here.
I have some coffee mixture left,
but right now we get to add our chocolate layer on.
Truth be told,
we've been really taking our time with this video,
and this cooled down and it was solid.
If that happens to you, or if it's a really cold day,
just microwave it for a few seconds on half power,
and it'll wake right back up.
I'm adding on half of the chocolate mixture.
Right now we're going to smooth this out
into a beautiful layer,
onto this layer goes our final piece of cake.
Guess what's next?
The remaining coffee mixture.
Just gonna pour this on and brush it in.
Now we add the remaining buttercream on top,
spread that into a smooth layer,
and you want it to be as even as possible,
it'll make things easier at the very end.
And I want the top to be as level as possible,
because this is gonna go into the fridge
to chill for 30 minutes.
It'll come out,
and then we're gonna add the remaining chocolate on top.
And I want it to look really nice.
I put a lot of effort into this cake
Pop this into the fridge for at least half an hour,
so the top can set up, and then we'll be right back.
(clock ticking)
My cake's nice and firm.
I'm reserving about two tablespoons of the chocolate
for my writing attempt.
Wish me luck.
Feels like a throwback.
I don't know who learned cursive in school.
I did, but it was a long time ago.
This gets set aside,
with the understanding that you're gonna have to warm it up,
and I'll tell you how to do that,
'cause piping tips can't go in the microwave,
and this is a number three tip.
You could just snip the tip off of the bag,
but you better have really good handwriting for that,
'cause it's difficult.
I'm gonna pour the remaining chocolate
on top of my chilled cake.
It's on the cooler side of spreadable.
I actually microwaved it for 15 seconds at half power.
Spread this into an even layer,
and we wanna get it basically to the edge.
Sweep it across the top,
and it creates a nice kind of like
intentional organic pattern that hides all the mistakes.
Back into the fridge.
One hour of chill time.
If you chilled it longer before, it doesn't need that much.
You just want the chocolate to set,
so you can cut it really nicely, and see all those layers.
(clock ticking)
My cake is chilled.
I scored the top, so I have a nice clean cut,
and now we're gonna get beautiful edges,
and have our perfect little pieces,
upon which we will write "opera" in chocolate.
Now while you snack on your secret snacking cake,
cut the rest.
Scored the cake, and I cut it right down the middle,
and I measured out two-inch bars.
It could be any size you want,
but I think two inches is a really nice pleasing shape.
Press down.
Then feast your eyes upon these beautiful layers.
Before I write,
I want the surface to be really smooth and glossy,
so you can use a hair dryer, a blow torch,
or a heat gun,
and just hit it really quick
until you see that color change.
I warmed my chocolate in some warm water,
so now let's practice writing.
Mm, not bad. That's nice.
Once you're confident you can write on the cake itself,
so just grab it up and give it a try.
Just like with piping a cookie,
you want to guide where the chocolate's going.
I've eaten so many scraps,
so I can tell you,
this cake is a symphony of chocolate almonds,
those custard-like egg yolks, and coffee.
But the way it dissolves on your tongue
is indescribably delicious.
Oh my gosh.
I really hope you get a chance to make this recipe,
and if you like this video,
check out my French dessert playlist.