Custom baking - triple chocolate organic & fair trade mocha cake

I had an interesting request this week - to make a very special cake! The request came via email, from a woman in the UK (Wales), whose daughter is on exchange at the University of Waterloo for a year. Her daughter is turning 21 this week and the mother hoped to have a decadent handmade cake made as a surprise for her. She had come across our website when they had initially come to Canada and tried to book a space in our B&B (we were unfortunately unavailable and never met the family). How could I refuse? I have been free-lance custom baking for about ten years now, and love doing these kinds of requests - each one tends to come with a unique story, and I always appreciate people who are looking for something handmade, rather than store-bought. Any excuse to make something decadent is always fun, especially as we don't tend to eat many of these kinds of baked goods around this house too often.

I wouldn't call this cake exactly healthy, but I did use whole food ingredients - real butter, free-range eggs from our hens, local real cream, organic flour, pure dark chocolate, fair trade cocoa, fair trade dark coffee. No hydrogenated substitutes here! The recipe comes from Wanda's Pie in the Sky cookbook (a wonderful pie, cake and confection maker from Toronto). It's a dense triple chocolate mocha layer cake, with mocha buttercream icing, a rich thick chocolate ganache dripped artfully down the side (I hope that's artful), and raspberry almond topping. I trust she will enjoy it! Happy 21st birthday to Lauren :)