Chocolate Mousse Moose cake

I'm getting more and more ambitious with my baking but it's hard to continue making things for just me and Rob so I'm using friends' birthdays as the perfect excuse to get the in kitchen and have a go a proper cake! Late in January our good friend Gillian celebrated her first birthday in the UK (she's from Canada) and threw a big party, I brought the cake! Using Canada as my inspiration I decided to make a Chocolate Mousse 'Moose' cake!

This is a three layer cake, two layers of chocolate butter cake sandwiching a middle layer of chocolate mousse. It was incredibly rich cake but the mousse was very light so not too filling. I couldn't find a recipe I liked so I found one for the cake but then replaced the mousse recipe with a separate one that i thought would work/taste better. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the cake being made or any of it cut once it was finished.

I've put the recipes below and here is my method. I made the cake in two 22cm spring-form pans. Once they are baked, take one cake out of the pan to cool, let the other cool in the pan.

Once the cake in the pan is cool, pour the chocolate mousse on top and refrigerate overnight or for at least 4 hours, the mousse must be set firm.

Once mousse is set remove the cake from the pan and add the first cake to the top creating a three layer cake. Basically the cake is done now and would be delicious with any topping like whipped cream, chocolate ganache, nuts, etc. make sure to keep the cake cold before serving otherwise the layer will collapse if the mousse gets too warm.

If you want to make this Canadian-inspired cake here is how I decorated. Cover the cake in a thin layer of chocolate buttercream, reserve some for piping the moose on the top. Then cover the cake in a layer of white fondant. Using water as an adhesive you can stick green fondant trees on the side and top, if you like. Using the remaining butter cream, pipe a moose on top, I used chocolate chips for eyes and freehanded a moose from pictures I found on the internet but you can probably find a template or more concrete instructions on Google.

Here is the cake recipe I used (ignore the ganache): http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3092/?utm_expid=13353178-7&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2F

Here is the mousse recipe I used: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/grandmas_chocolate_03490

Here is the chocolate buttercream recipe I used: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-buttercream-frosting-10000001879934/