Opera Cake Recipe

The Opera cake is a classic of French pastries. It consists of a very elaborate cake with several steps, as is customary in French haute confectionery. The history of the Opera cake, like almost all popular cakes, is somewhat uncertain. There are two creation theories: the first is by a famous pastry chef of the time, Louis Clichy, who created this cake for the Paris Culinary Exhibition at the beginning of the 20th century. The second theory is that it was created in the middle of the 20th century in the Dalloyau pastry shop and they gave it this name as a tribute to the Opera Garnier in Paris, since the colors of the cake are reminiscent of the marbles and ebony of the famous Parisian opera. Whatever its creation, the truth is that it has become a classic cake that has reached our days as one of the richest cakes in confectionery. It has a characteristic coffee flavor, with thin layers of Gioconda cake, chocolate ganache and coffee buttercream. If you like pastries and want to recreate this famous cake, you’ve come to the right place.

From this article we teach you how to make Opera cake easily. Let’s cook!

Ingredients to make Opera Cake:

For the homemade coffee extract

100 grams of sugar (½ cup)
75 milliliters of water
2 tablespoons of soluble coffee

Mona Lisa cake
100 grams of ground almond
100 grams of icing sugar

3 eggs M
25 grams of melted unsalted butter
25 grams of common flour

3 egg whites M
50 grams of granulated white sugar
50 grams of dark chocolate for brushing desserts

coffee syrup
150 milliliters of water
75 grams of sugar

2 tablespoons homemade coffee extract
Chocolate Ganache
100 grams of dark chocolate

125 milliliters of whipping cream
15 grams of butter
Coffee Buttercream

150 grams of sugar (¾ cup)
50 milliliters of water
2 eggs M

200 grams of unsalted butter at room temperature
2 tablespoons homemade coffee extract
Chocolate glaze

200 grams of dark chocolate
25 milliliters of seed oil

How to make Opera Cake:

To get started with the Opera Cake recipe, you will first need to make homemade coffee extract. To do this, bring the water to a boil and dissolve the tablespoons of soluble coffee in it and stir.

Then, prepare a blond caramel with the sugar.
So, put the sugar in a wide pan and put it on the fire. You should not stir it with a spoon, although you can stir the pan a bit to homogenize the sugar.
Once you have made the caramel, remove from the heat and add the coffee extract dissolved in hot water together with the caramel.

Stir constantly and return to heat until the lumps dissolve. Next, remove from the heat, pour into a small pot and reserve.
Next, prepare the Gioconda cake.
To do this, put the ground almonds, the icing sugar and the eggs in a bowl. Next, beat with an electric whisk, first at a soft power and then at a stronger power.

We point out that it must be very well assembled, between 5-7 minutes.
Next, melt the butter and add to the dough for the Gioconda cake, but this time mix with a spatula so as not to lower the creamy dough that you have obtained with the rods.
Sift the flour on top and gently mix again with the spatula. Booking.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Beat the whites with an electric whisk and when they are almost assembled, add the white granulated sugar and continue beating until they are firm.
Gradually add the egg whites to the Gioconda cake mixture, stirring with enveloping movements.
Line a 40×30 cm tray with baking paper and spread the cake dough on it gently with a spatula reaching the edges of the tray.

Next, bake at 180ºC with heat up and down for 8-7 minutes or until golden.
Once the cake is baked, let it cool completely on a wire rack. When it’s cold, cut three sponge cake sheets. With a pastry rectangle of about 18×18 cm, cut two sheets of equal sponge cakes.
The third, remove with the cuts that are left over from the iron.

Tip: if you don’t have a mold of that size, you can make one with a lined cardboard and aluminum foil.
Chop the chocolate and melt it in the microwave with small heat strokes.
Once melted, spread a thin layer with a spatula only on one of the cut plates. Next, let it harden. Reserve the three plates until the moment of assembling the traditional Opera cake.

To prepare the chocolate ganache, first chop the dark chocolate.
Next, bring the cream to a boil, remove from the heat and add the chopped chocolate, stir until it dissolves. Chop the butter and add as well.
Mix everything well and let it cool, take it to the fridge until it starts to solidify.

If you make it well in advance, before using it you must beat it so that it has a spreadable texture.
Tip: if you want to speed up its cooling, you can put the ganache in the freezer for about 30 minutes so that it takes shape and you can use it at that moment.
To make the coffee butter cream, put the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, cook over medium heat for 14 minutes or until reaching 110ºC.

When the syrup and sugar are at that temperature, beat the eggs with an electric whisk, remove from the heat and add the eggs in a fine thread while beating at a gentle speed. Once you have added all the homemade syrup, increase the speed a little.
Trick: beat constantly until you notice that the sides of the bowl cool down.
It is time to add the butter. To do this, it must be at room temperature and very creamy. This step is important, because if the butter is cold, the cream could be cut.

Add the homemade coffee extract and beat again, but just enough to integrate it.
The ideal is to use the coffee butter cream immediately to assemble the Easy Opera cake, but if you are not going to do it yet, keep it in the fridge, you will only have to beat it a little again to use it, because when it cools hardens.
Prepare a coffee syrup. To do this, put a saucepan on the fire with water, sugar and homemade coffee extract, let it cook for two minutes and remove from the heat.

Take the Gioconda cake sheet that you had brushed with chocolate and line the 18×18 cm square mold that you had with baking paper so that it does not stick and you can unmold it well.
Place the cake sheet inside with the chocolate layer facing down. Next, soak the top well with the coffee syrup.
Separate the coffee buttercream into two equal parts, weigh it if necessary, as it will be a very thin layer.

Place the first half on top of the cake pan, spreading well, also around the edges.
For the middle layer, use the cake iron with the cutouts. This time, brush both sides well with the coffee syrup. Next, place the layer of coffee butter on topand press lightly.
Next, spread the chocolate ganache. What do you think of this original Opera cake?

Tip: if it has cooled down a lot and has become very hard, you have to beat it for a few seconds until it becomes more manageable.
Place the last sheet of the Opera cake. Remember before soaking well with the coffee syrup on both sides.
Trick: press lightly when you place it on the Opera cake.

Cover the last part with half of the coffee buttercream and smooth well. Reserve in the fridge for two hours so that the cake compacts.
When the cake is compact, prepare the chocolate glaze.
To do this, chop the chocolate and melt it in the microwave with small blows, stir and add the seed oil in a thread while you mix until you get a uniform glaze.

Pour the frosting on top of the Classic Opera cake a little at a time and spread over the entire top layer of the cake.
Let cool, you can do it in the fridge. Once the glaze has set, carefully remove the mold and the baking paper from around the cake.
If you want to decorate it, you can do as we have done, printing a small treble clef on paper, tracing it and covering it with melted white chocolate.