{Be my Valentine} Heart-shaped Strawberry Mousse Cake

This is Hankerie's 2nd time to become one of the judge of this month challenge with theme "Be My Valentine recipe challenge" on verygoodrecipes.com. For this coming Valentine's Day, there are many ways to express your love to your loved ones, and cooking is definitively one of them!

"Love is in the air" - Valentine's Day is on February 14th, but you have almost all month (until February 27th) to participate in the Be My Valentine challenge. To make it more of a challenge, the judges added an extra rule: your dish needs to include something Red, the color of Love!

Along with all these judges below, we will choose the best 3 to win the prizes in the end of this challenge.

• Han Ker from Hankerie
• Irini from Irini Savva
• Katie from Down Home Foodie
• Kristen from Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker
• Leslie from Culinary Chronicles
• Michelle from The Adirondack Chick
• Minna from Naked Plate
• Simcha from Turkish Cooking Everyday
• Teri from The Freshman Cook

Hankerie's "Be My Valentine" creation: Heart-shaped Strawberry Mousse Cake with totally natural red colour from strawberries

Rules:

1. There must be at least one picture in your recipe, and both the recipe and picture need to be your own. If your recipe is inspired by another, please mention it in your recipe.
2. You cannot use an already published recipe to participate in the challenge, you need to publish a new recipe (otherwise there's no challenge!)
3. We would love to have participations from all around the world, including from blogs in languages other than English. Please do include an English translation of your recipe in your post though. :-) If you need help with the translation (proofreading etc.), we will be glad to help if we can.
4. You can participate with only one recipe.
5. You can participate from Friday February 3rd 2012 until Monday February 27th 2012 included.

Prize: 

For this challenge, verygoodrecipe.com wanted to offer something truly special and unique, something that would be tailor made for the winner. Asking Poppy who is both a talented food blogger and a professional illustrator to draw an illustration for the winner. Once the results are known, Poppy will draw a surprise illustration inspired by the winning recipe and/or the winner's blog.

I am submitted my own creation named "Heart-shaped Strawberry Mousse Cake" for this Challenge. I've included the recipe as well as the tutorial on how to make this cake below.

Heart-shaped Strawberry Mousse Cake Recipe:

Ingredients:

1. 8-inch ready baked sponge cake

Starwberry Mousse Cake:

1. 280ml pure strawberry purees from real strawberries (see below for the method)
2. Fresh Strawberries (2 punnets)
3. 100g sugar
4. 280ml Crème fraiche (whipped)
5. 1 tub of pure yogurt
6. 1 egg yolk
7. 8g gelatin powder with 3 TBSP water

Decoration:

1. Fresh strawberries

Tutorial : Method

What you need to prepare is cooled and peeled 8 inch sponge cake, halves into 2.

Step 1: Wash and cut the fresh strawberries (1 1/2 punnets)  into pieces, use blender to blend it until puree (see below).

Step 2: Mix the puree with sugar, yogurt, egg yolk and gelatin. Pour in the whipped Crème fraiche into it.

Step 3: Put the remaining 1/2 punnet of fresh strawberries surrounding the cake as 1st layer. 

Step 4: Pour in half mousse, alternate with another layer of sponge cake and finish it with the remaining mousse. Refrigerate it over night. Decorate with fresh strawberries before serving.

Be My Valentine Challenge

on Very Good Recipes

My  Heart-shaped Strawberry Mousse Cake entry also eligible for Valentine Hearts: Heart-shaped dishes for Valentine's Day!

Hope to see your participation soon :)