Hello- I am making the chocolate covered strawberry cake for my friend’s 96th birthday tomorrow. She likes things very sweet and the strawberry mousseline I made this morning came out beautifully, but not as sweet as I’d like it to be. At this point, when it is completed, is there anything I can do to add extra sweetness? I didn’t have the recommended American Foods strawberry butter, and I forgot to strain the preserves. Therefore, there are a few small chunks of strawberry, but it looks pretty enough. I’m off to work in a few minutes and can’t check the site until after 6 tonight, but any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance…...

Hmmm, two thoughts:

You could try dissolving sugar in a little of the jam/preserves by heating them together.  If all the sugar dissolves and it’s smooth, you could then add it to the mousseline when cool.  But there is a limit to how much extra jam the mousseline will hold.

The other thought is to leave it as is, and make sure the chocolate frosting is sweet enough.  Since the chocolate is the part of the cake that might be construed as bitter, perhaps that is the most important component to get extra sweet. 

OK, must go now, all this talk of extra sweetness…

Good idea Julie—I’ll just add that the chocolate frosting for this cake is already sweeter than a typical Rose recipe—at least, that is how I remember it.

Thank you Julie and Matthew for the responses. I’ll try to sweeten up the strawberry a little and make sure I make the chocolate extra sweet. Since we’re at the beginning of what is predicted to be a 3 day snowstorm, I’ll have time to experiment a little and make the cake for the weekend.

Hi! I want to make this cake and I have a problem with strawberry mousseline. strawberry butter is not available and I don’t have strawberry preserve. Could I use fresh strawberry instead? If so can anyone help me out with the proportions?

Do you have the Cake Bible?  I think Rose gives a recipe for strawberry conserve there.

I used to have it but unfortunately I lost my copy in a flood last year.