This is a cake that almost never made it to my blog. In the frenzy of preparing for my husband’s birthday celebration, I forgot to photograph the star of the party - this peanut butter and chocolate mousse cake - before it was sliced and devoured! Fortunately, I was able to save the last piece for this photo.

My husband’s favorite cake (coincidentally, the one got me started with this whole with this whole baking thing) is a chocolate cake with peanut butter mousse, dulce de leche and bananas. This year, I modified it, incorporating the main flavors into a lighter cake more suitable, perhaps, for summer. This cake is almost bakeless to boot, which is a welcome relief from the the oven heat in the summer. The layers from the bottom up: a chocolate cookie crust, peanut butter mousse, dulce de leche chocolate mousse surrounded sliced bananas, ganache, decorations of chocolate shavings, peanut butter and dulce de leche sauce.

I was concerned about the proportion of chocolate/peanut butter mousse to cake (or the lack thereof of cake), but it far surpassed my expectations and turned out to be light and absolutely perfect as a summer cake. Guests went for seconds and thirds. People defied their dairy allergies and vegan principles to eat this cake (I felt a bit guilty about that, but I didn’t exactly force them). So yes, it was a big hit.

Hopefully I will make this again and eventually post the recipe - I’ve been baking more based on instinct rather than precise measurements (I know, pastry is supposed to be such a precise art) and modifed various recipes as I was making.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Cakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.