A Farewell Cake: A Combination of Chocolate and Tiramisu in A Cake

I've never liked saying goodbye, who doesn't afterall, especially if it's to the person you dearly cherished like parents, dear friends, families, it's never been a pleasure. I've had my fair share of tears at the airport for a few years back saying goodbye to my parents and loved ones when I used to travel back and forth between states and countries, and you would think that I would get use to it after some time, but I didn't. I don't travel much anymore, and if I do, it is for a vacation, so it's a whole different story.

It was such a short notice from my fellow teammate at work, H, that she would be moving to East Coast to join her husband there; I mean, it is only natural and normal that a man and a wife should be together. They've been living their separate live as husband and wife for a few years due to work reason and they've decided that they need to be together, and as much as I'm happy for them, there's this sadness I can't seem to get away from. I've been blessed by so many great people in my life and H is definitely one of them. It makes it even harder to say goodbye when they're no longer just "a coworker", but "a friend" instead.

We had dinner for her farewell, and also lunch on her last day at work, I regret not hanging out with her more often, I guess a lot of things in our life, we take it for granted. I could only think of making her a cake to send her away and I thought it could be a nice gesture.

The girl loves chocolate, anything with chocolate she would eat and it seems like she has quite a sweet tooth. She eats so little during our lunch break and I often tease her about it, sometimes I feel embarrassed for eating twice as much as hers, or more, but she has a hard time saying no to dessert I observed :). It is not the season for chocolate yet, at least in my season but I'll bake anything for the girl and I finally decided on this chocolate mousse and tiramisu cake. She can never turn down coffee too, she ordered mocha shake at Costco, Starbucks, McDonald's, anywhere with coffee, she'd get it. I made this cake the first time out of coincidence and it turned out very good, and I've been making it for a few times ever since, changing it a little each time and this time I added a layer of Valrhona crunchy pearl in the middle of the cake for the added texture.

Just like the previous ones, this cake consists of two chocolate sponge cake, brushed heavily with espresso and rum solution, with dark chocolate mousse in the bottom layer, mascarpone tiramisu cream on the second layer of filling. The whole cake was then covered, top and sides, with milk chocolate whipped cream, and finished off with dusting of rich cocoa powder (I used cacao barry). From the three times I made this cake, I experimented with different chocolate mousse recipe and I think I'm pretty happy with this one, using pate a bombe batter. I need to work on the proportion of each component though so that I don't end up making too much or too little for each component.

This cake wasn't so big, it was only 12x10" but it seems like the surface area is too large for me to decorate. I admit that I'm not very creative in the decorating department, but nothing a few berries can't fix :), you can almost guarantee that berries and chocolate would make a great presentation on a cake.

There was a little cake accident during the transporting process to the office. The chocolate fence was starting to melt in the car, it had to sit unrefrigerated for two hours due to some unavoidable circumstances, but it didn't stop the people from devouring it I guess. I was just glad that I didn't pass out on the spot when I saw my cake almost got destroyed by unrefrigeration.

I got some of the components leftover and I used them to make this mini cake. I used chocolate glaze to cover the top just because I've already made some, and I just realized how hard it is to take good shots with shiny glaze. You can see all kinds of reflection on the cake, making it look not very smooth, but anyways.... The mini cake has the same components as the big one, but only have one chocolate sponge instead of two and dark chocolate glaze instead of cocoa powder just because I wanted to practice glazing, which I found that I am not so good at :(

The pictures of the final cake didn't turn out so good, it was so dark and I didn't have time to play with the camera, so I'll take what I've got :)

So to H, I wish you the very best in life for you and your husband. Thank you for being such a good friend all this while.