Something to look forward to...

I am addicted to food magazines. When I was packing up all of my worldly goods before moving back home to my mum's house in January, I realised that I have every Gourmet Traveller from 2007, a good couple of years worth of Delicious, Donna Hay and BBC Good Food. In October 2008, the following cover of Vogue Entertaining & Travel caught my eye. I bought every issue of that magazine until they stop publiching it (I know - I was disapointed too!) Of course as soon as I saw this in the cover, I knew that it would have to be my 24th birthday cake. Of course, time has moved on since then!
The cake was surprisingly easy to make - and that is even using powedered gelatine! I had yet to discover the wonders of leaf gelatine back in 2008. My crystalised rose petals aren't quite up to VE&T standards, but I love them all the same for the story behind how I made them. My mum had forgotten to buy pink roses for me, so on her way walking home from work, she did a very quick dash and grab from a neighbour's garden. I'm sure the roses were leaning over the footpath making them fair game :)

All in all, the cake was an incredible! There was not a single morsel left. I dreamed of this cake afterwards - it was that good! I looked for any excuse to make this cake again. Finally, an occaison presented itelf. Every year, with my girlfriends we have a Christmas lunch to celebrate another year. As none of us are big fans of the traditional Christmas pudding, I decided to give the cake another run. Again, a success! As well, as my girlfriends, my wonderful boyfriend came along to sample the dessert I had slaved over making.

He was in love with it. In fact, he still talked about this cake months and years after I made it! Which, given we are in a long distance relationship and one of the things I missed the most was cooking for him, was so lovely! One of the things I was really looking forward to was making this cake for him again.

On Wednesday night I had my chance! I adapted the recipe to make use of Belgium's famous dark chocolate and the homegrown raspberries from my boyfriend's family home. It was again a success! A bit richer this time, but given the quantity of chocolate I used in both the ganache and the mascarpone mixture, I wasn't surprised...

I'm already trying to find another excuse to make this cake again...

The recipe can be found at the link below

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/22001/stawberry+layer+cake