I don't often blog about my cakes but this one is worth a mention. Everyone has a "bad" day now and then, right? Well making this cake went from bad to worse. It was what I considered to be my day of "hell" in the cakemaking business. It all started when I failed to line my tin as I normally would do. Consequently as the cake mixture rose above the top of the tin, the paper lining collapsed, and the mixture kept bubbling over the tin like a volcano erupting until there was a nice pile of cake mixture cooking on the bottom shelf of my oven. Luckily I had enough mixture left over to make another layer for the cake. The chocolate kahlua mousse which I had prepared earlier for the filling of the cake was in the fridge setting, or so I thought. The next process was to make the chocolate shards for the outside of the cake and to coat the strawberries in chocolate. With all the processes now completed it was time to assemble the cake. I don't normally cook a mudcake the same day I am going to decorate it, and now I know why it is not such a good idea. I cut the cake into three layers and filled each layer with the chocolate mousse, which by the way hadn't set properly and was continuously oozing out between each layer. By the time I had placed the top layer on the cake, the weight of the cake had caused the middle layer to split as it was so fresh and soft and I had mousse and cake sliding everywhere. I then had to cover the three layered cake with double cream that I had inadvertently overwhipped and was almost like spreading butter. With my husband coming to my aid, we eventually covered the cake and all that was left to do was to place the chocolate shards around the cake and place the strawberries on top....WRONG!! As we were cautiously placing the delicate shards around the cake, my husband broke a chunk of chocolate from a section of the shards. Being very apologetic, he jumped in the car and raced to the supermarket to buy more chocolate so that I could patch up the broken bits. Whilst he was gone, all hell had broken loose. I was placing the last strawberry on top of the cake when it slipped out of my hand and hurled across the top of the cake like a bullet and broke all the chocolate shards along one side of the cake. At this point I completely lost it and broke the remainder of shards around the cake to match the broken side. The look of horror on my husband's face when he returned with a handful of chocolate was priceless. All I could think of was that I was glad it was my sister's birthday cake and hope I would never experience another day like this again!!!
