It's never as simple as that...

The chocolate decoration pears are my favorite part of what we made today.

Ok I thought the Opera cake was delicious?! The Opera cake does not even hold a candle to the chocolate cake with caramel pears. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Delicious as it was I did have a few hiccups along the way to this mouthwatering fantasy this morning. I had to make my caramel twice, because I did not include my cream slow enough. On my frantic second round the caramel looked amazing, but I was thinking it may have been a little dark. I asked my chef "does this look better?" he responded with "no, chef I am asking you, does it look better?". Ummm okay, "uhhh yes?!"...with a head-nod of approval from my chef I moved onto making the most luscious chocolate mousse you have ever had in your life. My partner and I are rolling and doing great...then the dreaded P-I-P-I-N-G BAG comes along to bite me. When we are piping something delicate and fine, such as a white chocolate boarder in this case, we have to make baby piping bags out of baking paper. Let me tell you it is harder than it sounds. Up until now I would say that my piping bags made out of baking paper were not perfect, but they worked for me...well not today. I made 7 piping bags today and all of them busted. I had to use my partners piping bag after my white chocolate one busted while I was piping my boarder so close to my cake I almost had a potential over-reaction moment right there in the pastry kitchen. Lucky for me I have resources and my friend Jasmine is going to give ma a little tutorial on proper piping bag form. Sound ridiculous? It probably is, but when you have a chef strongly urging you in a yelling manner to finish your cake, having a sturdy piping bag is not only helpful it is like a life boat on the Titanic.
At the end of it all I received and almost perfect score..."too bad your piping bag messed you up on your piping" chef said to me "I would have given you a perfect score otherwise".  I thought to myself, 'yeah, yeah, what else is new...'my piping isn't perfect', come-on chef its time for a new headline'.

Anatomy: you can now see how long it takes to assemble these cakes, notice the outer rim of cake, the base, the center layer...nothing is as simple as just baking a cake around this place.