I love chocolate, in pretty much all forms. One of my favorite ways to eat chocolate is when it's combined with cream to make ganache. You will probably recognize ganache in its most used form as the center to chocolate truffles. It has endless possibilities though, and today I'm going to do something incredibly simple and astoundingly awesome with it- frost a cake.
Now, ganache can have any number of ingredients added to it for extra flavor. Anything from vanilla or cinnamon to bacon or ancho chiles. I am going to show you how to make the basic ganache recipe. All you need to get started is a bag of chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips) and heavy cream. The most important part of making ganache is remembering to have double the amount of chocolate as cream. I made a double batch, but generally that means 6 oz. of cream for a 12 oz. bag of chocolate chips. There are multiple ways to make ganache, but here is how I make it.
Start out by slowly bringing your cream to a boil. You will need your chocolate as soon as the cream is boiling, so I like to add it to a glass bowl and have it close by, along with a whisk. As soon as your cream is ready, pour it over your chocolate chips. I forgot to take pictures of that step (oops!) but there isn't much to see anyway! Your cream should completely cover the chocolate chips, if it doesn't just give the bowl a little jiggle and they should sink down. Leave your bowl alone for about 5-10 minutes, this gives the cream time to melt the chocolate before you start stirring. Now... grab your whisk, and let the magic happen!
As you start to stir your cream and chocolate, pay attention to what it looks like. It will quickly turn into what looks like a big bowl of chocolate milk- delicious, but not what we are after. Keep stirring and eventually you will start to see streaks following your whisk. Those streaks mean your ingredients are combining and you are getting very close to having a bowl of ganache!
After a few minutes of whisking, the cloudiness will disappear and you will be left with glossy, beautiful, rich melted chocolate yumminess. Now, if you wanted to, you could take your chocolate and pour it over a cake as is. It would give you a glossy finish, perfect for topping a bundt cake. Or you could drizzle some over ice cream, or dip fresh fruit in it. But what I did... was wait. It's difficult, the waiting for ganache, but it's worth it. Because after a while (a shorter while if you refrigerate), it will be thick and fudgy and easy to spread on a cake.
Which is exactly what I did.
Due to a baking mishap (chocolate chips weren't added when they were supposed to have been- oops!) I had a few layers of cake laying around. So I did what any normal person would do, I cut each layer in half (this is also called torting), spread caramel all over them, stacked them into a cake too tall to be covered with my cake stand cover, and slathered ganache all over it. And then let my kids go to town with sprinkles and icing on the top. Delicious and fun, my kind of dessert.
Recipe
12 oz. chocolate chips
6 oz. heavy cream
Over medium heat, bring your cream to a boil. Immediately pour cream into bowl over chocolate chips and let sit 5-10 minutes to allow chocolate to melt. Whisk gently, stirring until mixture has lost all cloudiness and is glossy and smooth. Use right away if pouring or let cool to use with a spatula.
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