What a big fat lie. Technically my sister made the mousse yesterday. BUT I planned everything else and gave her specific instructions to follow, obviously she didn't. The mousse had to be refrigerated overnight, and since I was at work after school until nine thirty yesterday and all of this morning, she had to make it. The recipe "I" used was Gretchen's Rich French Chocolate Mousse. I told my sister to buy dark chocolate and if she needed extra to use the Old Gold 70% cocoa I had hidden as a snack. What she heard was use the Old Gold 70% cocoa and the normal dark chocolate if needed. Therefore the mousse still tasted good but a little less sweet, which isn't bad, just means I have no more dark dark chocolate.
Before I totally went crazy about baking and started this blog, I watched a series called Unique Sweets. And on one of the episodes "Updated Classics" was a birthday cake from The Harrison.
It is a chocolate layer cake, moistened with cola (I know right?) with a layer of blackberry jam, followed by a boozy mousse which is topped with crushed malt balls. I was intrigued by this combination and decided to try replicating it without every tasting the original (meaning I can't really compare!)
I used a jam called Bonne Maman: Fruits of the Forest Conserve and regular malted chocolate balls from Sweet As.
For the chocolate cake, I used Sweetapolita's Rich & Ruffled Chocolate cake (I halved it, to make a 2 layered 6 inch cake). The cake is just as Rosie says it is; moist and easy to make. I pretty much put all the ingredients into a bowl and mixed it with my ancient hand mixer.
Once the cakes were cooled, I cut the domes off and started layering. I placed the first layer back into the pan, brushed it with coke, spread 1/3 cup of jam and 1/2 cup of mousse and sprinkled around 50g of crushed malt balls. I was a bit too ambitious and crushed 150g, so I only used a third of what is pictured. The last step was to place the second and final layer into the pan and then refrigerate it, so when it was time to take it out, the mousse and jam wouldn't squeeze out. Since I was baking for my great aunt, aunty and cousins for that night, patience was not present in the kitchen. I took the cake out of the refridge after 15 minutes thinking it was firm enough to frost (it wasn't but who cares). I used the remaining mousse and smashed up the domes of the cake and garnished the sides with it.
Overall, the cake was nice, though I still need to work on my decorating and photography skills. The mousse and cake paired really well. I think the jam was a bit too out there, the flavour was quite dominate, so I think in the future if I was to make this cake again I would omit the jam and maybe just use mousse. Obviously, you can experiment and try with different jams, store bought or homemade.
I made a 2 layer 6 inch cake - it fed 10 people, though my family and I ate it after eating a massive dinner, so the pieces were relatively small.
CAKE RECIPE HERE (I halved it)
MOUSSE RECIPE HERE (I also halved it)
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