Chocolate Mousse Cake

It's my mother-in-law's 70th birthday today... so I figured since my husband decided what she's having for her birthday supper, I'd at least make her a cake I know she'll love!  I used this Chocolate Mousse Cake recipe, and didn't run into any of the problems mentioned in the comments section with the mousse part not setting.  (And I even screwed up and added the salt & vanilla to the egg whites instead of the yolks!)  I had everything put together & ready to go in the fridge at 6pm yesterday, and took it out around 9:30 this morning to add the ganache layer & the walnuts (even though the recipe says it needs to set for 1-2 days, and I wasn't really expecting to be able to do anything else until at least this afternoon, curiosity got the best of me, and I'm glad it did!).  Keep in mind, I'm generally a 'grab a box mix & throw something together' kind of baker (because I never plan this far in advance - lol), so I'm pretty proud of how this turned out:

I added the chocolate covered strawberry to the top, because the cake looked naked without it... but since the top of the strawberry wasn't very pretty (the leaves were all gnarly), I cut them off, hollowed out the top of the berry a little bit, filled it with more chocolate, and sprinkled on some crushed walnuts.  Not exactly what I had in mind, but it certainly seems to do the trick!

Now it's just the hard part left - waiting until after supper this evening to cut into this baby & find out how it tastes!

Laters!
Steph