Ganache ratios
Ganache is chocolate and cream. Hot cream melts the cocoa butter, and stirring spreads fat droplets through the cream's water into a smooth emulsion. More chocolate sets firmer. More cream stays softer.
Heat the cream, rest, then stir
Chop the chocolate fine, heat the cream to a bare simmer, pour it over and wait a minute. Stir from the center out until glossy. Greasy or grainy means it split. A spoonful of warm cream stirred in from the center often fixes it.
Test yourself
Questions from the interactive lesson, with the answer and the why.
You make ganache with 2 parts chocolate to 1 part cream by weight. It will set:
Firm enough to roll into truffles. More chocolate means more cocoa butter, which sets the ganache firm.
True or false: Using more cream relative to chocolate makes a ganache firmer.
False. More cream means a softer ganache. More chocolate means a firmer one.
What went wrong? You dump hot cream on big chocolate chunks and whisk hard right away. The ganache looks greasy, with oil pooling on top.
Big chunks melted unevenly and hard whisking split the fat out. Fine chopping, a short rest and gentle stirring keep the fat evenly emulsified.
Fill the blank: In ganache, tiny fat droplets are spread through the cream's ___.
In ganache, tiny fat droplets are spread through the cream's water. The water phase of the cream holds the fat droplets, which makes an emulsion.
You want a ganache to pour over a cake as a glaze. Which ratio is a good start?
About equal weights of chocolate and cream. Plenty of cream keeps it fluid enough to pour and still set softly.