Mango and Raspberry Mousse Cake

It was one of my brother's birthday last sunday and we decided to have a small dinner with some family members. It didn't take me too long to decide what cake I wanted to make. I quickly decided to make mango and raspberry mousse cake. I've never tried mango and raspberry combination but I think it would be great. Besides, I really think that the color combination between pink raspberry and bright yellow mango would be very pretty, don't you think? The morning I was planning to make the cake (I baked the cake base the day before), I was stucked with what recipe I will use. I read a lot of recipes for raspberry mousse from my cookbooks, internet, blogs, and yet I couldn't decide which one that I want. Same thing happen with the mango mousse. I made mango mousse cake once before, a long time ago (in fact, it was the first birthday cake I've ever made) and it was pretty good, but I forgot the quantity I used for that. Long story short, I had to repeat the raspberry mousse three times and two times for the mango mousse, to get what I wanted. By the way, I didn't use any recipe that I read earlier. I ended up approximating the amount of raspberries/mango, gelatin, sugar, cream, etc. myself. That is why I had to repeat it so many times. I threw away the first raspberry mousse. The second attempt was already completely assembled, but somehow, I wasn't satisfied enough. I thought the raspberry layer was too thick. So, as crazy as I would get sometimes, I decided to make the whole thing all over again. I baked the cake base and start from the beginning for the rasp. and mango mousse. The third one was better. So, what did I do with the first completely assembled cake? I called my friend and asked him to pick it up :). I decorated it with some fresh berries and mango. The glaze on top of the cake was also flavored with mango pulp. For the sides, I brushed some melted chocolate on an acetate strip using a paint brush and wrap it around the cake. When the chocolate is set, peel off the acetate sheet, then wrap a chcooalte ribbon around the base to cover some imperfection. Everybody liked the cake (I think). I was pretty happy with the result, tastewise and appearance-wise. I love the bright yellow color of the mango. This is the kind of cake I would choose if I were to buy a cake from a pastry shop. The amount of gelatin I put was just right. The mousse was still soft, and yet still strong enough to hold it's shape. The only thing I would change next time would probably adding a tad more raspberry pulp. Everything about this cake really shouts summer. I just wish that I had better lighting when I took the picture to show you how pretty the color is. It's a little dark on the pictures above. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to capture the cross section view of the cake, so you can't really see the raspberry mousse that's hidden inside the cake. I can tell you that the color was very pretty though.