Chocolate cake base

1. Preheat the oven at 350 F.
2. Grease and dust the baking pans with cocoa. Dust the sides of the baking pan well.
3. In a bowl containing boiling water, add the cocoa powder and espresso and let it bloom for few minutes.
4. In a large bowl, sift the cake flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
5. In a smaller bowl, beat the eggs, add the oil, honey, sourcream and the orange extract. Blend it well.
6. Now add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient bowl slowly, blend it with hand mixer until just combined. Do not overmix the batter.
7. If you feel it is not combined yet, use silicone spatula and with cutting action blend the ingredients.
8. Divide the batter into two 9 inch round cake pans and bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until the cake tester comes out clean.
9. Cool the cake in the pan for 20 minutes, finish cooling on a wire rack and after cooling it completely, if you are not procedding with the recipe, then wrap it with a cling film and refrigerate it until later use.

Chocolate mousse

1. Bloom the gealtin in ¼ cup of cold cream for 10 minutes.
2. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate with butter and vanilla extract. Cool and stir till it comes to the body temperature.
3. Warm the gelatin slowly by putting the gelatin and cream mixture in a hot water bowl.
4. Add this gelatin to chocolate mixture.
5. Beat rest of the cream until you get medium stiff peaks.
6. Add the gealtin – chocolate mixture and stir it.
7. Do not overwork on the mousse.
8. Cool it to room temperature and cover it with cling wrap and let it set in the fridge for 4 hours or overnight until set.

Assemble the cake

1. Bring the cake base to room temperature. While working on chocolate room should be sufficiently cold. So switch on th AC if it is too hot.
2. Spray or brush the chocolate cake with sugar syrup. I have used one part sugar to 2 part water ratio for the syrup.
3. Let the cake soaked in syrup for half an hour.
4. Put one layer of cake base on a cake board or plate you are using.
5. Take out the mousse from the fridge, dip the icing spatula in hot water and then scrape the mousse and generously apply over the base. Repeat the steps until you have used all the mousse. Spread the mousse evenly over the cake.
6. Now put another layer of the cake base over the mousse topped base. Press it gently so that the mousse oozes out of the corners.
7. Now take out the chocolate ganache from the fridge (it should be spreadable) and cover the cake with this.
8. Let the cake sit for 40 minute, before slicing it out.