Sticklers for Detail

A few of the true Opera cake cognoscenti out there have emailed me over the last several days pointing out that I left instructions for creating a truly “authentic” Opera cake out of my tutorial. That’s true enough if you don’t consider an Opera cake to be an Opera cake without with the name “Clichy” or “Dalloyau” written on it in chocolate. Me, I’m just as happy to let those guys do their own branding work. But in the event you want to dot every “i” and cross every “t” when assembling your cake, you can create a small round chocolate seal in one corner of the cake by pressing down a small blob of molten (tempered) chocolate with a bottle top and piping “Clichy” on it — in cursive — in chocolate icing. Alternately, you can also just write “Opera” in chocolate on each individual slice. That, I believe, is also acceptable in Opera cake purist circles. Judges?