The inspiration for my opera cake came from the popular ‘70s dessert, the Watergate cake, which may have been inspired by Watergate salad, although that could lead to an endless chicken-and-egg discussion. Beca used the flavors of banoffee pie, and Kimberley combined the flavors of passionfruit and lime with dark chocolate. Frances made a lemon sponge and lavender buttercream “soap opera” cake. Ruby’s was a chocolate, almond praline and saffron opera cake. Paul Hollywood said it was all about timing. Mary Berry was looking for “sheer perfection” in their cakes, with thin, even layers. While opera cake is traditionally made of thin layers of joconde sponge soaked with coffee syrup and sandwiched with buttercream and chocolate ganache, the brief for this challenge set before the bakers in the semifinals of The Great British Bake Off was to use any flavors they choose. Thus it was named “the opera.” The only problem with these legends is that an ad for “gâteau opéra” appeared in the newspaper Le Gaulois on March 18, 1899.

According to the shop’s own website, Gavillon invented the cake in 1955, and his wife, Andrée Gavillon, compared it to the stage of the Opera Garnier in Paris.

The other person closely associated with the opera cake is Cyrique Gavillon, who worked at the Parisian pastry shop Dalloyau in the 1950s.

His creation was originally called the Clichy cake but was later renamed opera cake. There are several claimants, including a legendary pastry chef in Paris, Louis Clichy, who supposedly premiered something like it at the Paris Exposition Culinaire in 1903. We may never know who invented that now-classic French gâteau, the opera cake.

Great british bake off opera cake