Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake

I made this cake for a fundraising auction.  I think it's my best one yet.  2 layers of chocolate cake, Raspberry Mousse filling, raspberry buttercream frosting, chocolate ganache, topped with raspberries and a raspberry glaze.

I used a devils food cake mix, baked using the high altitude directions.  Like my great grandmother said, while homemade cakes aren't really that hard, a cake mix is faster, and there's not any noticeable difference (plus, I know the cake will turn out great every time).  

The mousse filling recipe came from a strawberry mousse cake recipe I found awhile back.  I swapped out the strawberries and used thawed frozen raspberries instead.  I also doubled the sugar.  In a cake with so much other sweet stuff going on, I actually prefer a slightly less sweet mousse, but some people like things sweeter than I do.  If you use the mousse in a pie or for standing alone, be sure to double the sugar.

The frosting was also from that recipe, although I added a bit more powdered sugar to make it stiffer.  Again, swapping thawed frozen raspberries for the strawberries.  I didn't chop them, just added them into my mixer and let it do the work.  

The chocolate ganache recipe is 4oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate (I use a ghirardeli chocolate bar), 1 TBSP chilled butter, and 3 TBSP karo syrup.  Chop the chocolate and butter, and add karo syrup.  Bring 1/2 cup cream to a boil and pour over chocolate mix.  Let sit for 5 minutes.  Stir gently until the chocolate is smooth.  let sit for a few more minutes.  Pour over cake and use a spatula to direct it over the sides.  I poured mine onto a cold cake, so it sets up faster.  

After the ganache had cooled, I piped a circle of stars with a blob in the middle, and piled the raspberries up inside the circle.  

The cake still needed something else, and my husband suggested some sort of sauce, so I used 1/4 cup of raspberry juice (from my home canned raspberries- mostly water and sugar), but pureed raspberries, strained, with some sugar added would probably work fine too, and dumped a packet of gelatin into it.  I let it sit for a few minutes, and then stirred it up.  It was still a little lumpy, so I added a little karo syrup to encourage glossy smoothness, and microwaved it for 30 seconds.  Then I let it cool in the fridge and when it started to thicken up, I drizzled it over the raspberries.