July’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was a Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream chosen by Chris of Mele Cotte. I’m not crazy about nuts, so I decided to do as many others are doing and used up the almond flour left over from the opera cake. I used orange juice and orange marmalade for the glaze. My opera cake didn’t rise much and I don’t really like buttercream, so I decided not to use a 10 inch pan and cut it into 3 layers, and just used two 9 inch pans and baked it just until it started to pull away from the sides of the pan and was springy on top, about 18 minutes – which was maybe a little too long.
I had a lot of trouble with this cake. I usually use parchment, but since the recipe didn’t call for it, I just used grease and flour, and my cakes stuck to the pan. Not just a little stuck, like I’ve sometimes felt in the past, where you know it is stuck in just one place, this cake felt absolutely stuck to the pan everywhere. At first I considered cutting it up and using it for trifle, but then I decided to see if I could cut it in half and salvage it. Considering how stuck it was, it came out pretty good.
After that disaster, the buttercream came together well, and my ganache was great, but when I took the buttercream out of the fridge after putting on the ganache, it had almost turned to butter. I tried whipping it, but it didn’t seemed to help, so I thought I could warm it a bit in the microwave, which just turned it into soft butter. So I melted it, added powdered sugar and piped it on the cake.
It looked much prettier uncut when I could hide all my mistakes with frosting. I liked the combination of orange and chocolate ganache, but I prefer a moist cake and wouldn’t make this one again. But it was definitely a learning experience! Thanks to my kind neighbor for sharing the cake with us.
Cafe Rio Sweet Pork Barbacoa Salad
I love to bake, especially cookies, cakes, and pies.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh Barbara, that butter-like cream – you could have let it come to room temperature and whip it a little.
But I think it’s like a Daring Baker to come up with something like your idea :-)
Congratulations, you did it!
Francijn
i think your cake turned out beautiful. i dont think for the picture you cake looked overbaked. I think someone posted on the kitchen to put parachament and the grease and flour. i think if i hadnt done that i would have been stuck!
When I made my mini cakes I baked 1 cake in metal springform pans and the micro minis in my custard cups.
The metal pans the cake stuck to the sides even though I greased and floured. I had to loosen it with a knife.
But the micro mini baked in the glass custard cups just popped out with no problem. I love baking in glass or clay, it’s just so much better and your cakes rise more too.
I heard many people say thier cake stuck. I’ve even seen one trifle so far. I think yours turned out pretty!
Here’s some info on the cookie carnival. In case your interested. :)
http://www.bubbleandsqueak.biz/cleanplateclub/2008/02/join-carnival.html
congrats! You did it! and it looks great
It wouldn’t be a DB challenge if it wasn’t a learning experience! Glad you made the cake!
Beautiful job Barbara, I had to take a short break from DB, but hope to be back soon! Your cake looks lovely!
Dispite the troubles, your cake came out awesome :)
Despite the hard work and troubles your cake turned out to be pretty. Congrats!
Your cake looks great and nobody would ever know you had problems!
Before I made my cake, I read about others’ mishaps and buttered the heck out of my cake pans. Seriously–I think I had more butter in them than the cake.
Despite your cake disaster, your finished dessert looks yummy!
Way to go! Good job figuring out a way to mke things work :) Your cake looks delicious!
Your cake looks very good! Who woulda thunk you had an stubborn cake. :-)
Really nice job–and great thinking on your feet! We like our cakes more traditionally American (ie moist without a syrup) too, but it was a great learning experience!
yay for daring baker resourcefulness :) your cake looks really pretty!
Your piping is beautiful. I used a nonstick springform pan and I think that was my key to it not sitcking. But you still made a lovely cake
why would you want to hide it …. imperfections always make things look so much prettier . Your cake looks lovely.
Congrats- it looks great. I skipped this month but they all look wonderful and creative!
great job on you cake- I agree with you though, this one was hard to cut! I love the piping on top, it looks beautiful!
Ooo, your cake looks amazing!
that looks nice. bet it was delicious too.
It still looks great Barbara, one would never be able to tell that you had trouble with it at all! :)