A birthday cake to die for

Here's the birthday boy, so excited about his one-of-a-kind cake that he can hardly contain himself. 

I can tell he's growing up because he asked for a grown up cake. I told him he could have anything. (I'm waiting for one of them to ask for Mater.)

I've already done Bob the Blob, Elmo and others. But this big kid wanted a cake made out of Chocolate Mousse. How grown up is that? He's more worried about flavor and texture than appearance. Sigh. 

Of course I had to have a little cake with it. It was a birthday after all. Here's how I made it happen. I baked the bottom layer of cake in my spring form pan. After it cooled, I spread the chocolate mousse on top (still in the pan) and then froze it for two hours. Once it was hard enough for the mousse to hold its shape, I released the pan, removed the cake and spread chocolate ganache along the sides and piped little spirals around the top and bottom edge. Check out the side view. 

  

You know how you don't really feel different the day after your birthday. There's not some magical switch that clicks over to say "I'm 20 now." Well, this cake was that switch for me. The sad part is that he's not a little boy anymore. The happy part is, I get to eat chocolate mousse.