Chocolate Ganache Recipe _ All My Tips and Tricks!

Hey , I'm John Cannell and today I'm Preppy kitchen .

I'm showing you how to make a silky chocolate gnash .

So let's get started to make this recipe .

You'll need some nice chocolate and cream .

But I'm gonna show you how to make this with different liquids too .

First off , I'm giving my chocolate a chop .

This is a silky amazing soup of chocolate .

It's really versatile , but a ton of things can go wrong .

So I wanna show you everything that can go wrong .

So you don't waste your chocolate starting off with four ounces of semisweet chocolate for this recipe .

You could use chocolate chips , but you wanna make sure it's a nicer brand of chocolate because if it has a bunch of like add-ons and fillers in , it's not gonna melt as easily .

There's a higher chance it could break where it gets grainy and it's not smooth .

So go ahead , use a nicer chocolate .

It's the main ingredient and you will notice the difference giving this like a nice , like a good chop .

I don't want giant pieces in here because you want everything to melt at the same rate .

Chop chop chop chop chop today , I'm using a semisweet chocolate , you could go even darker .

But I've noticed from experience dark chocolates with a lot of in them just tend to break more easily and it's really frustrating .

So I like to stick with semisweet , right ?

This looks pretty good .

It doesn't have to be powder , but you just want smaller pieces .

This is set aside and now we're gonna add the cream , you can use the microwave for this .

I'm gonna do on the stove top just because I have more control .

That makes me happy .

The easiest way to make is called scalding .

So you're gonna get the cream really hot just before it boils and we'll pour it over the chocolate .

So I chop four ounces of chocolate .

That's about one cup , meaning I want half a cup of cream .

You usually use a 2 to 1 ratio .

So one part liquid , two parts chocolate .

You can alter this in a add more liquid for a more or less liquid for a thicker ganache that sets up a little bit nicer .

Thicker GNA are used for things like chocolate truffles which are delicious .

You can click up here for my chocolate truffle video thinner GNA are more for pouring .

So let's take this and get on some heat while our cream is heating up .

You wanna grab a glass bowl or metal bowl and something to stir with that is not a whisk .

You don't use a whisk to make a because it it's way too much air in there .

You want it to be silky smooth , like hot chocolate but thicker and keep an eagle eye on your cream .

We're only using half of a cup .

It heats up super quick .

And what happens when it comes to a boil ?

Is it boils over and makes a giant mess ?

It's just starting to bubble at the edges .

You can give it a swirl and once that comes to a bubble one more time , we're ready to pour our cream is nice and hot .

I'm adding all of my chocolate into a bowl now and pouring my hot scalded cream right over the chocolate and you'll see a lot of it melts right away .

But some of those slightly larger pieces are gonna be a bit stubborn .

Give it a little shake just like that to move the chocolate around and you can let this sit for a while .

I like to cover it too .

You can grab just about anything and just cover it up .

So it retains some of the heat .

This is gonna set for about 4 to 5 minutes , just let it melt the chocolate .

And the main thing is you don't wanna burn the chocolate .

If you burn the chocolate , the is gonna get ruined .

It's just like there's no way to come back if the chocolate burns .

So we're using low heat to really melt it slowly .

If you don't wanna use your stove and you wanna do the microwave .

Go ahead and just put your cream in this bowl .

Microwave it on low power in short bursts .

And once it starts to come to a boil , like almost starting to boil when it's scalded , pour the chocolate in and cover it up .

It works just the same .

I get a ton of questions about how to make a ganache without using cream .

And the answer is you can use milk , you could use coffee , you can use water .

So I wanna show you how to make a water ganache .

It actually comes in really handy .

And a lot of times when we can't get cream , you might pan is like , oh I can't make this recipe , but you can make it with almost any liquid and you can add other things into the liquid too .

So if I was making some truffles for me , I could use cream and add some bourbon or rum to that and it makes them delicious .

Just a couple of tablespoons is all you need .

While this melts away .

I'm gonna make the water ganache and show you how easy it is .

So for my water gnash , I'm actually gonna use chocolate chips , one cup using the same 2 to 1 ratio and I'm using a double boiler .

So I have some water simmering in a small pot over there , half a cup of water right into the chocolate chips and we're gonna be stirring over heat .

So come on over this looks so wrong , but it's actually right .

So , a good hint for any chocolate recipe is either to add some coffee in or add some espresso powder to the recipe and it just amps the flavor up .

So when you're doing this over heat , I think it's nice to just keep stirring .

And any time you're doing a double boiler with chocolate , be gentle and you can even take this off heat and keep stirring .

You like it's getting warm and then put it back on heat or turn the heat off and the residual heat will keep things nice and melted .

This looks super thin and watery right now .

But one thing to know about all ganache is the hotter it is , the thinner , the consistency will be .

So you can't trust and judge based on what you see when it's hot .

So here's the deal .

You didn't see this happen .

No one uses a whisk for a ganache .

It is not OK .

Don't do it .

But if you're making a water gnash , you might need to get the whisk out just to agitate it more because there were some chocolate solids holding together and making it seem grainy .

Now , we have a really thin silky gnash and I'm gonna let this cool down to show you the actual effect back to our cream gnash .

It's had a time to like just melt and look at this .

I love it .

The chocolate is really soft right now .

It just needs to be worked in with the cream and cream is the best for making gnash because it has so much substance and body and fat in there .

It really works with the chocolate .

Super easily stirring this together .

And one thing I don't want to see are any lumps .

I don't want to see those lumps .

This might have cool down too much .

It's just a cold day here and this countertop is like ice .

So if that's the case , you can either pop this on to a double boiler or give it a few seconds at half power in the microwave just to warm it up a little bit and melt it back up .

Even with the lumps in here , this looks so silky and beautiful .

It's already starting to set up and you can see the gloss , you can see that nice , wonderful texture .

It's gonna have if you want a thicker ganache though , the scalding method isn't gonna work because there's not enough liquid to melt .

That chocolate use the double boiler .

You can add the cream and chocolate in together or you can warm the cream at first place it over a simmering water bath and then just keep stirring over gentle heat .

And if you're trying to make a white chocolate ganache , it's delicious and amazing when it's done , right ?

But you have to use the lowest heat .

One of the most popular and infuriating uses for a ganache is on a drip cake .

That's where you finish your cake .

It's covered in frosting or something and then you top it with the , you don't want it to fall all the way down because you don't get that beautiful drip effect .

When you're doing that .

I have a couple hints for you .

One let your ganache cool down .

It's too hot to use right after it's melted two once it's cooler , get something like a sheet pan , add some of the on and let it drip over .

See right now it's running way too fast .

I know it needs to cool down and if it cools down and it's still too runny , you can just melt some more chocolate in there .

One of the main problems in making a ganache is breaking , breaking is when instead of having a silky smooth mirror glass finish , you're having little Granules all over the place and you're like , oh my gosh , what does this ?

It looks horrible and the mouth feel is not great .

Either you can fix this problem by using butter , cocoa butter or even like solid coconut oil , mix those in just mix , mix , mix , mix , mix and eventually it'll come and smooth itself out .

My two s are starting to set up and I wanna show you the difference and also the similarity I'm not gonna lie .

The water one looked almost like garbage because it was so thin .

It was just like almost like coffee and I was like , oh maybe it's not working .

I don't know what happened .

It's working .

It just takes some time to set up .

I'm gonna show you with a spoon what the consistency is like .

Dip it in and just like that .

You can see it's really shiny .

It's giving good coverage .

Now , let me show you the water base a dip that spoon in there and look at this .

That is gorgeous and it's even shinier than the cream based one .

So with a water based ganache , the advantage is you can use a dark chocolate and for people who are really sensitive to dairy , this is for you .

But if you wanted the best flavor , I gotta say cream is where it's at .

This chocolate ganache is destined to cover some cupcakes I'm making later today .

But first I'm taking a little bite for you .

That is heaven .

Oh my gosh , there's like a lot of stuff happens .

It's so good .

If you like this video , check out my chocolate playlist .