I have been searching for a cookbook that contains recipes for the kinds of desserts I crave.  Thick, dense chocolate cakes, creamy fruit infused chocolate mousses, petite chocolate ganache drenched mini cakes........and I finally found a great book - it’s called ‘Death by Chocolate’ by Marcel Desaulniers.  The cover depicted a slice of cake studded with whole strawberries, drenched in chocolate ganache and I knew I had to make that cake.

Of course, I had to tweak the recipe as it stated that the shelf-life of the cake was sadly just 1 day, due to the use of whole berries placed within the strawberry chocolate mousse layers.....so I adapted the recipe a bit as I knew I wanted to be snitching the cake over a couple of days - and also sharing the cake with friends during the upcoming weekend......so I opted to leave out the whole berry pieces from the mousse and just add the pureed strawberries to the mousse.   I also poured some of the strawberry sauce over the layers and added some extra berries to the serving plate.

They say pictures say 1000 words - so instead of writing a lot - I’m going to include a lot of pictures.  I must say though - for anyone who is a true chocolate lover and finds passion in creating spectacular desserts - go and get this book - the pictures themselves will speak to you.  Now......on to my pictures.......

Stirring the butter and cream for the cakes, cooling cakes,  fresh berries, and strawberry puree