#opera cake

If you told me a month ago that my 2nd anniversary post would not be a Dreamling recipe but a Jayvik one, I would have asked you what the heck was a Jayvik?! Dreamling still has my heart, but the heart can always expand to make space for more things it loves! So here I am, after falling late, but very hard into the Arcane fandom. Although I love all the characters, Viktor is my beloved, and by extension Jayvik. While I was still screaming at processing the Arcane season 2 ending, Monuments appeared on my For You page. Till then I had consumed a satisfactory amount of Arcane fanart, but this was perhaps the second or third Jayvik fanfic I had read. It's a very sweet canon divergence AU fix-it fic and it has food! So for my 2nd anniversary post, here's presenting multiple food items from Monuments -- Chicken Tortilla Soup, Street Corn, Matzo Ball Soup, and Chocolate Opera Cake.

As some of y'all know my wedding anniversary was two days ago, so I made these for a special dinner. I was out of chocolate, so I made the cake the next day. Since the second soup in the fic does not specifically say what kind of soup it is, I also reached out to the author, who said they really liked matzo ball soup. And oh... it's my favorite new soup! I was very worried I was going to mess it up; clear soups are not my strong areas and I was sure the matzo balls would disintegrate in the boiling water. But after studying a bunch of recipes, I tried my best and it was delicious!!

The next big challenge was this cake...

It has 6 layers of almond cake, soaked in coffee, filled with alternating layers of French coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache, and topped with a chocolate glaze. OMG it took me 5 hours to make it and I had the most terrible headache in the end! That was more due to the fact that I caught a bad cold while excitedly experiencing the most magical snowfall on my anniversary, which I considered a romantic gesture from my husband from the astral plane. But the cake was worth the pain and now I can make French buttercream! It takes time to get the texture and temperature right, but it might be my new favorite cake icing! Two new favorites from one fic!!

Without further delay, here are some lines from Monuments!

オペラ | 夜空のライオン #pixiv https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/143477430