Double Chocolate Mousse Cake

This cake was made way back in August 2008 when my good friend Naomi visited for lunch. This was the dessert that I served that day and in all honesty, I have never seen a cake disappear so fast! Aside from my family, there were 4 other adults so in total that made 6 adults and 2 kids. The cake was fairly large and also rather rich and I really thought there would be plenty left over - especially since The Lovely Wife insists that I serve small slices - so people can take second serves if they like and not be forced to stuff their faces with too much cake, and end up not enjoying it. I can see some logic in her idea but to me, theres nothing wrong with a large slice of cake!!




The plan with this cake actually turned a little awry. Nonetheless, it still turned out pretty good.



This is what I did.

I made my sponge cake recipe from the Australian Women's Weekly New Cookbook (1978)which is the same recipe used for theOrange Choc Sponge Cake and also the Reverse Black Forest Cake. This sponge cake is very, very light and is great with mousse. I split the cake into four layers and then I then made two ganache 'mousses' - one with milk chocolate and the other with dark chocolate. This was done by mixing equal parts chocolate and cream and then whipping the mixture up till it became thick.

This is where the plan went awry. I wanted to cover the whole cake with a dark choc ganache but realised I had very little dark chocolate left over. So what I did was to mix a little cream with chocolate, some icing sugar and cocoa as well as some butter and I got this buttercream-ish sort of topping.
So.. one layer of sponge cake, brushed with some sugar syrup, then a layer of dark chocolate 'mousse', another layer of sponge, followed by the milk chocolate 'mousse' yet another layer of cake topped with dark choc 'mousse' and the final layer of cake on top. I then spread the icing over the cake and placed it in the fridge.



The cake cut really well although it was a little hard to keep the slices standing up since the sponge was so light. What I did was to serve the cake on its side. Not as nice as an upright slice, but as long as the cake tasted good - right?



See? The cake was finished in one sitting. I've never had a cake that disappeared so fast. Maybe the guests were really hungry or they needed a lot of dessert to douse the fire from my Fiery Chicken Curry or maybe, just maybe, this cake was a real winner!