'Remember that television show where the woman wanted to be a pastry chef and she had to make this mondo cake with the G clef design on top and she had so much trouble with it?' So at the beginning of May when the challenge was announced and I saw it was L'Opera, I had a flashback to that woman and her very public struggle and I started sweating. I felt her pain as she struggled with the cake not knowing that a couple years down the road I would REALLY feel her pain! She tries and tries, and with a lot of practice and effort finally gets it right (almost). Her first experience ends in failure and the cake is rejected. She's given a big challenge.make an opera cake. In this particular episode, a trained chef wants to try out being a pastry chef and she ends up doing a short stint at Porto's Bakery.

Until now I've never tasted or made one, though I've seen them in posh bakeries, but I do have a very strong memory regarding opera cake that comes from a certain episode of Your Reality Checked, a show on Fine Living in which participants take time off from their regular jobs/lives to try something new. Think Buche de Noel (Yule Log Cake), or in this case, think.L'Opera!

When Ivonne and Lisa, the venerable founders of The Daring Bakers, choose a challenge, you know it's going to be a challenge.

Le opera cake