Raspberry and Dark Chocolate Mousse

So I was asked to do a 50th birthday cake, and to my delight, was given no budget, and no restrictions on flavour, size or design. So I decided to experiment a little on my own flavours, rather than following recipes. The end result was this.

Dark Chocolate  and Raspberry Mousse Cake, sprayed with white chocolate.

Fresh Raspberries, glazed with raspberry jam.

Decorated with raspberries, freeze-dried strawberries,

dots of green tea ganache and lemon curd, and white

chocolate panels sprinkled with freeze-dried strawberries.

The cake consists of a chocolate shortbread base (as found in Darren Purchese's Mandarin and Salted Caramel Cake), a raspberry puree baked cream, and then chocolate and raspberry ganache. I placed small chunks of raspberry on top of the ganache, and then encased this insert in 70% Dark Chocolate mousse. 

After freezing the mousse+insert overnight, I removed it from the pastry ring and left it to thaw in the fridge for an hour. I had left-over white chocolate spray from my Green Tea and Pistachio cake, but this time I whitened it using titanium dioxide. After the cake was thawed, I heated the chocolate spray to 35-40C, placed it into my paint spray gun, and went to town. Then, it was just a matter of flicking red coloured chocolate spray over the cake, and placing the raspberries, freeze dried strawberries, lemon curd and green tea ganache around the cake. I then melted white chocolate, spread it onto an acetate sheet, and sprinkled over crushed freeze-dried strawberries before it set. Before the chocolate completely set, I scored out some panels, which I placed on the sides of the cake.

I love freeze dried fruit! The strawberries still taste like strawberries, but they're incredibly crunchy! You can find them in some health-food shops. I used an organic brand called absolutefruits. For 20gm they were $3.50, but a little goes a long way.