Today we worked on two separate styles of cake, travel cake and opera cake. A travel cake or a gâteau de voyage is a style of cake that is enrobed in chocolate or a casing of some sort to keep it fresh while traveling. The idea of the cake is that it will stay fresh outside of the fridge so you can travel to a friend or families house and share it. An opera cake or a gâteau opéra is a thin multilayered cake that is served naked to show the layers of the cake and the perfection of them.
We started with the travel cake which consisted of a marbled vanilla cocoa cake and a cherry jelly filling. The cake was baked in a closed metal box environment with a hollowed tube insert to create a hole for the jelly to sit in. When the cake was finished baking we took the top off to let the heat out and then we removed the tube when it was slightly cooled but not compleltely cooled. The tube needs to be removed before the cake completely cools so that it does not dry to the tube and then it is not removable.
Once the cake was completely cooled we slid it out of the metal mold and then filled it with the cherry jelly. We then threw it into the blast chiller and made a chocolate diplomat cream and a cherry whipped ganache to decorate the top. This was piped on top of the cake and then we used a mixture of chocolate, oil, and cocoa nibs to enrobe the entire cake. Once sliced in the cake shows the cherry jelly insert and the two different creams on top. Since the cake was cooked in a closed environment it became very dense however it still tasted scrumptious.
While the travel cake was made we also worked on the opera cake components. The opera cake was made with a almond sponge, cherry jelly, and chocolate diplomat cream. We made each of the components and then let everything cool before layering them together.
The best way to layer the opera cake and to get the layers even was to use acrylic slats to smooth each of the components evenly. After one layer of each component we repeated on a separate sponge and then froze both in the blast chiller to set before layering them on top of each other. We then cut this 6 layer cake in half to layer on top of each other and create even more layers. Finally we added the sponge on top and cut all of the edges to make them uniform.
We topped the opera cake with the whipped cherry ganache and some chocolate meringues that were also made. The opera cakes ended up looking very uniform and pretty and would be perfect to serve at a party. Tomorrow we work on petite fours and then we are pretty much done with the course. Last week best week!
The opera cake layers look amazing. 😋