While scooping a bowl of vanilla ice cream the other day, it suddenly dawned on me to employ a childhood tactic and add some chocolate. We rarely had chocolate syrup, but there always seemed to be cocoa powder or chocolate chips lurking in the pantry.
Mixing cocoa powder, water and sugar – while chocolately – was grainy and too much like hot chocolate. Melted chocolate chips didn’t pour and froze on contact with the ice cream.
But add a little cream to melted chips and bingo: pourable sauce for ice cream.
Through kitchen experimentation, I had hit upon the tried-and-true recipe of ganache before I ever knew what that was.
The thing about chocolate is it can be finicky. All the top baking show judges wax on about a shiny finish and a crisp snap to any chocolate applied to, say, a cake. And how is this achieved? By a torturous process called tempering. Personally, I think chocolate already has a temper and shouldn’t be encouraged.
You already have to worry about the dreaded seize, which happens the instant a drop of liquid hits the melted chocolate. Have you ever used a double boiler to melt chocolate? If one stray wisp of steam hits the chocolate, the whole thing turns into a chalky, lumpy mess. The same thing happens if you put a cover over a bowl of chocolate chips that you are carefully melting in the microwave.
But tempering is a whole new level of temper – yours and the chocolate’s. When you melt chocolate and then solidify it again, it can solidify into six different crystal types. Depending on the temperature of the set, you will get soft, crumbly chocolate that melts all over your hands, all the way up to super hard chocolate that can take a week to form.
What you are going for is crystal type six, which means you have to melt it to a certain temperature, cool it to a certain temperature, melt it again to another temperature and cool it to another exact temperature. As much as I love chocolate and food science, this is too much for me. It also makes a giant mess.
Enter the ganache – the yummy, easy going cousin to temperamental chocolate. All you need is chopped chocolate, or chips, and cream. No thermometers, marble sheets, heating pads or science. All you do is heat the cream and pour it over the chocolate. Wait two minutes, and stir.
Remember those truffles we made for Valentine’s Day one year? Ganache. Remember that ice cream topping we just talked about? Ganache. The proportion of chocolate to cream dictates the use, but other than that, the method is always easy-peasy.
For chocolate sauce or a pourable glaze for a cake, use a 1:2 ratio – one part chocolate and two parts cream.
To make truffles use a 2:1 ratio – two parts chocolate and one part cream. Let it set, roll into balls, and then roll in a covering of cocoa powder, nuts, sprinkles or whatever strikes your fancy. This is fun project for kids.
To make a divine chocolate frosting, use a 1:1 ratio. Let the ganache set in the fridge, and then whip it. I love milk chocolate for this, especially for kids.
To make the ganache, measure your chocolate and cream. You can use a scale to measure exactly 4 ounces of chocolate, but I usually just eyeball the chocolate chip package. Put your chocolate in one bowl.
Measure the cream. Remember 1 cup of liquid is equal to 8 ounces. So, for 4 ounces of chips you would use a cup, or 8 ounces, of cream. This refers to the 1:2 ratio for chocolate sauce.
Heat the cream, but it doesn’t need to be boiling. I put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Watch that it doesn’t boil over. Once the cream is hot, pour it over the chips. Now wait. This is really the only rule. Don’t touch the chips and cream for two whole minutes.
If you go any faster, the chips won’t melt evenly and will cool too quickly and leave lumps. I told you chocolate has a temper.
After two minutes, stir gently with a whisk until the chocolate is all melted and the sauce is smooth. This sauce literally takes 5 minutes to make.
Your kids will think you are magic! If you really want to blow their minds, coat the inside of an ice cream cone with the ganache and freeze it; fill with ice cream. No more boring vanilla!
