This post may contain affiliate links. Everything you ever wanted to know about lindt valentine chocolate Chocolate Ganache!
A simple, two-ingredient recipe for a delicious frosting, filling, drip, or glaze. Everything you ever wanted to know about making Ganache! Dark chocolate ganache drizzling off a white spatula into a bowl. As simple as it is to make, I have had my fair share of split and grainy ganache incidents.
It’s usually due to me rushing or being impatient, but still. Making a ganache is an emulsion — similar to making mayonnaise — it’s precise, and it can split easily. White, milk, and dark chocolate bars beside a small pitcher of cream. From Classic Cakes to Holiday favorites and everything in between. Chocolate Ganache Ingredients Ganache consists of two simple ingredients — chocolate and cream.
These have a higher cocoa butter content and will help ensure your ganache is silky smooth. My favorite brand of chocolate to use is Callebaut, but it’s also the brand that’s easiest for me to get. Lindt or Ghiradelli, which should be readily available in your grocery store. This will help ensure your ganache is rich and delicious, but also stable. Apparently, you can make ganache with just chocolate and water, but I haven’t tried it myself. This seems counter-intuitive to everything I know about how chocolate and water react together — water is notorious for causing chocolate to seize. I highly recommend using cream instead, but if you’re in a bind you can try it with water.
You will need to use less water than cream though, due to consistency. Silky smooth chocolate ganache in a bowl. Chocolate to Cream Ratios Ganache ratios are a bit of a personal preference kinda thing. There is no right or wrong. I’m including the ratios that I like to use, and that work best for me. These should be a good starting point if you’ve never made it before.
We use ratios when making ganache so that you can customize it to whatever amount you need. When I say 2:1 chocolate to cream, that means two parts chocolate to one part cream — twice as much chocolate as cream. These are all just examples — you can customize the amounts to whatever volume of ganache you need. You’ll notice I’ve listed all of the examples by weight rather than volume — 1 cup of chocolate chips and 1 cup of finely chopped chocolate will not be the same amount of chocolate, and will affect the consistency of your ganache. As such, I highly recommend using weight instead of volume to measure your ingredients when making ganache. Dark, milk, and white chocolate chopped up in separate bowls. Dark chocolate contains cocoa solids, cocoa butter, and sugar, but little or no milk solids.
Milk chocolate contains cocoa solids, cocoa butter, and sugar, and has more milk solids than dark chocolate. White chocolate does not contain any cocoa solids and is made up of cocoa butter, sugar, and milk solids. Since milk and white chocolate have more milk solids than dark chocolate does, they require less cream to get to the same consistency as dark chocolate ganache. Here are the ratios I use for frostings, fillings, and drips.
It’s taken me a while to figure out the amounts that work well for me, and I’ve stopped using butter due to splitting issues. Whipped milk chocolate ganache on a cake. Whipped Chocolate Ganache Whipping the ganache once it’s set it will lighten the color significantly, and it will make it almost a peanut butter consistency. In the Milk Chocolate Almond Cake above, I used whipped ganache for the outside and used unwhipped as a filling. Ganache is most often used in its whipped form as a filling or frosting, but I prefer the darker color and smooth texture of unwhipped ganache.
Guinness Cake and the Chocolate Truffle Cake below. It can be trickier to work with though, as it is a bit softer. You can whip any kind of ganache — white, milk, or dark. Chocolate truffle cake using ganache as a filling and frosting.