At about 2pm on New Year’s eve, as Super-sous and I were eating lunch, we began talking about how we wanted to spend the evening ringing in the New Year, 2013.
Feeling a bit tired from just traveling back from the East and getting ready for another trip this week, we felt like doing something low key, but also wanted to see our different groups of friends who were hosting parties in different spots in L.A.
As we sipped afternoon Lattes, Super-sous started a sentence by saying, “Okay, humor me on this one.” With my curiosity peaked, I nodded and she continued, “what if we a bake a bunch of little layer cakes and bring them to our friends at different parties throughout L.A.? It might be a bit of driving, but it could be fun?”
I think it was before she could actually complete her sentence, that I was already pulling out my recipe for Jaconde, the layers that comprise a classic French Opera Cake. In a word: delicious. After several hours of baking, the result was 9 cakes, each consisting of 3 layers of light and spongy almond flour cake heavily imbibed with espresso simple syrup, slathered with chocolate ganache and then rolled in sliced almonds. We dropped off the 9 cakes at different parties and whether the cake was received at 10pm or 1am, I can say with certainty, that it was devoured with equal enjoyment by all.
Chef Nathan Lyon 