Bring about an inch of water to a boil in a saucepan.

In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the cocoa powder, flour and salt.

Grease with butter or nonstick baking spray (NOT cooking spray). Line a 13x18-inch rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. It is not a difficult cake to make, as far as technique goes, but it's sure to impress nonetheless. This showstopping cake is so delicious and so rich, just a small square is more than enough to satisfy. The cake layers are soaked in coffee simple syrup, which helps keep the cake moist while it's stored in the refrigerator (cake typically dries out in the refrigerator). In this version, I swapped the almond sponge cake for chocolate cake (the kind typically used in chocolate jelly roll cakes). Time-consuming to make and assemble? Yes. Once assembled, the whole cake is topped with a chocolate ganache glaze, and the sides are trimmed so you can see all of the delicious layers.

Traditional French opera cake is made up of layers of almond jaconde (a type of sponge cake), separated by layers of coffee buttercream and whipped chocolate ganache. There was a reference to 'opera cake' in a newspaper advertisement for Patisserie de Grand Hotel in 1899, but no picture, so who knows if it was the same dessert now known as opera cake. Dalloyau, a Paris-based patisserie, claims that the grandfather of the company's current president created the dessert in 1955 and named it after the Opera Garnier. No one is quite sure how it came be called Opera Cake. It was my favorite of the cakes we offered. One of the desserts we sold in the bakery was French Opera Cake. Production was divided into stations, so you might be working on bread, cakes, pantry (making buttercream, pastry cream, or other things that went into finished desserts), or oven station. Three mornings a week, we started the day with a 5-hour Production 'class'-making all of the treats that were sold in the school's bakery, which was open to the public, or served in the school's restaurants.

I attended culinary school for two years. Chocolate opera cake is a slight twist on the traditional French dessert, with thin layers of chocolate cake, coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache.

How to make opera cake