My Birthday cake.. attempt/year 2

Strawberry Mousse Cake

When I was a teenager one year my birthday fell on the same day as an orchestra dress rehearsal- so my crafty mother ordered cake for all of us from a local bakery- it was a big delicious surprise and their strawberry mousse cake from then on became my cake. What I would want every year. I've since been long away from said bakery and over the years have made a strawberry and whipped cream cake. But it was always missing that great layer of strawberry mousse.
Now as a vegetarian getting the strawberry mousse layer to work without gelatin continues to be a problem-- the neat cake you see here is frozen!

Basically I baked up a nice vanilla butter cake- then trimmed it and split for 3 thin layers of cake. I then found a Moosewood recipe for strawberry mousse- to which I added some agar/vege gel to try and make it firmer. A few sliced strawberries in the first layer as well. While it tastes lovely its just not right and once left to room temperature a bit too oozy to take center stage. So I suppose its handy that this year (my 30th) there was no party or candle/singing to go with the cake.

I topped it off with some leftover white chocolate ganache (from the wedding trial cake) and a few strawberries. It didn't look have bad (when still firmly frozen!) I suppose next year I can have another attempt- but first I need to perfect a standing strawberry mousse!