A Mere Truffle

The raw ingredients of happiness: cream and chocolate

Ganache solves problems. It’s a great base coat for cakes, laying the groundwork for a silky-smooth coating of fondant. Rolled into balls and coated with cocoa, it makes truffles that look like their earthy, fungal namesakes. And it’s perfect for curing bad moods.  Forget Julia Roberts and her fluffy rom-coms: when I’m feeling low, I drink cheap wine and make ganache. There are a lot of recipes and techniques out there, but after about two glasses of mediocre Pinot, I find it’s best to keep things simple. Two ingredients, one method:

• Chop chocolate into little bits*
• Heat cream just until it starts to boil
• Pour cream over chocolate
• Wait a few minutes
• Stir

Any of the chocolate-cream mix that is not eaten immediately with a spoon should then be left at room temperature overnight to harden into ganache. At which point it can be eaten with a spoon for breakfast. Like I said, ganache is versatile stuff. Part of its versatility lies in proportion: how much cream? how much chocolate? You want it to be thick enough to serve its purpose while remaining creamy and unbroken. (More on this later, but trust me, you don’t want to break it.) I’ve made a lot of ganaches, from pourable glazes to scoopable solids, but never paid that much attention to the exact relationship between ratio and end product. That ended today. In my continuing quest to conduct the most fattening Science Fare experiment imaginable, I made 4 batches of ganache** with the following cream : chocolate ratios:

• 4 : 1
• 2 : 1
• 1 : 1
• 1/2 : 1

I used a quart of cream in this experiment. Next on Science Fare: DIY heart bypasses!

Upon stirring in the cream only the 1 : 1 ratio behaved as I expected, with the chocolate shavings slowly melting into the cream to form a smooth, silky, pudding-like mass. Any more cream, and the chocolate didn’t seem to dissolve uniformly, leaving tiny little flecks. The creamiest ganache (4 parts cream : 1 part chocolate) looked and tasted like insanely rich chocolate milk. The least creamy ganache (1/2 : 1) didn’t dissolve the chocolate entirely – not enough heat from the scanty cream? I microwaved it very briefly and stirred it until it dissolved into a uniform but distinctly grainy texture, and I suspected it was broken (not good!).

Decreasing cream from left to right

But, I decided to give them all an equal chance to set up, and left them at room temperature for the day. Things had not changed too much, although to my surprise, all the ganaches had gotten significantly thicker. Even my “chocolate milk” mix, the 4 : 1, had thickened, although not enough to retain a tell-tale spoon swipe for any length of time. The 2 : 1 mix was pleasantly pudding-like, although not quite chocolately The 1 : 1 ganache was thicker and still perfect. The most chocolately ganache had a thin film of congealed fat on top of it and it tasted distinctly greasy: it was definitely broken.

To sum up:

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Day 2. Note the bit of fat on top of the broken ganache, far right.

So, about that broken ganache: how does that work? Ganache is basically a fancy emulsion, like a vinaigrette. In this case, water from the cream (itself an emulsion) teams up with sugar from the chocolate to form a thick syrup that bathes and suspends fat and cocoa particles. If there isn’t enough syrup, the fat can’t be contained and “breaks” away from the rest of the mix. Hence a slick of milkfat coating a grainy mess of cocoa.

A 1/2 : 1 ratio of cream : chocolate is actually not unusual for ganaches, so in this case, I suspect the chocolate was in part the culprit. I love my chocolate ultra-dark and minimally sweetened, providing little sugar to dissolve into syrup and help keep the fat suspended. A sweeter, lower-cocoa chocolate might have given me a better result with a 1/2 : 1 ratio – but the extra sugar might make a 1 : 1 ganache looser and less  solid.

This ganache is just right, and it's in my kitchen right now. Isn't science great?

Clearly, further experimentation is needed. Can a rule-0f-thumb be worked out to relate cocoa percentage to optimal cream : chocolate ratio? Next time I need a pick-me-up, maybe I’ll bust out the wine and start in on the science.

*Disclaimer: Science Fare does not endorse tipsy knifework, although we do practice it. Do as we say, not as we do.

**This sort of thing provides balance in my life. After making ganache this morning, I spent the rest of the day in a small harbor village in Newfoundland, covered in rotten herring juice.