Ganache

Ingredients:
  • 3 cups dark chocolate
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons honey or agave syrup
  • 1 cup heavy cream


Method:
1 Start the day before—Place chocolate, butter, and honey or agave in a mixing bowl.
2 Heat the cream in a soup pot over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the cream comes to a boil. Then pour the cream over the chocolate and honey or agave and let sit for about 5 minutes.
3 Whisk the ingredients together. The mixture will be liquidy, but don’t be scared—it’ll set up.
4 Cover the bowl with plastic wrap so that the plastic is actually touching the surface of the ganache, and let it
sit overnight at a cool room temperature.
5 After the ganache has sat overnight, it can be used as frosting as is. If you’d like an airier, lighter frosting, you can whip it in a standing mixer, but it’ll make the ganache dull-looking and a little broken. To use it as a filling, just microwave it for a few seconds to get to a syrupy consistency and pour it into the center of cupcakes with holes poked through them.

NOTE: Many of my cupcake recipes call for this ganache recipe to be flavored, and it’s very easy to do. As long as you keep the same quantities of liquid and solid ingredients, you’re golden. For instance, if
you’d like a whiskey ganache, replace half the cream with whiskey. The trick is that you won’t want to heat up the whiskey, so you’ll need to melt the chocolate first and add the whiskey after the cream has been mixed in.

NOTE: How to fix a broken ganache—A broken ganache looks like a vinaigrette before you mix it: The fat separates from the mixture and makes streaks in the chocolate and gives it a grainy texture. To fix it,
heat up the ganache in a saucepan over medium heat until it’s hot enough to make it all spreadable, then transfer it to a mixing bowl. In a separate pan, heat up a little bit of heavy cream and pour it into the middle of the broken ganache. Slowly whisk it in, starting from the middle, making your way to the side of the bowl. Stop whisking when the ganache has become smooth and silky looking.

YIELD: About 4 cups
KEEPS: Two days at room temperature if sealed with plastic wrap
(the plastic wrap should be touching the ganache so no air gets in), or up to five days in the fridge sealed with plastic wrap