Fruit and Nut Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Leaves

The chocolate leaves were fun to make and were one of the main learning objectives of the night, since they were our first application of tempered chocolate. The tempering part remains tedious as ever, but I like making the leaves and I think they look beautiful. The cake itself was a bit tricky to make because it was nearly impossible to not break the emulsion. Ah well, it was worth the work because it came out amazingly. It was almost like a giant brownie with dried cherries and walnuts. I would have preferred no cherries and a different type of nut, but still yum!