How to make the perfect chocolate glaze for all your cakes?
Melted chocolate. The best creation in the world. Don’t you love it when you have a beautiful chocolate cake with a layer of melted chocolate on it, evenly laid, and sparkling and as soon as you cut that first perfect slice after measuring it precisely because you do not want to ruin the cake and when you do get that adequate slice, the melted chocolate goes dripping from the sides? Well, that was a long question. As you can see I got a little carried away there. But you get the point, right?
This melted chocolate or ganache or chocolate glaze bourgeons the look and feel of the dessert. There are couple of ways you can use chocolate ganache in you dessert. But before we get into the assorted options of using your ganache,
Let’s talk about how to make the best chocolate glaze
Chocolate glaze is extremely easy to make and it only takes a few ingredients. the most basic chocolate glaze recipes requires you to heat equal parts (by weight) of cream and chopped chocolate. First, you have to warm the cream and then pour it over the chocolate.
Now , leave the to rest for a short period anywhere between 3 and 10 minutes generally. After than stir it and combine the cream and chocolate together till its smooth.
The key is to wait till the cream warms up the chocolate enough to mix it together. If you blend it immediately, you will not be able to get the chocolate to melt.
Now, for that shiny appearance...this is what you need to do
You can add butter or even corn syrup. The corn syrup also acts as a sweetener for the chocolate glaze without the crystallization side effect that comes from other sugars.
You can use any kind of chocolate to make the glaze. You can use dark chocolate with any amount of cocoa or you can even use white chocolate. If using white chocolate, a ratio of 3 parts chocolate to 1 part cream is standard. You can add heavy whipping cream to it, to make a creamier, thicker ganache.
Here are two ways I like to use chocolate ganache
- Use it to glaze the cake
I make eggless coffee cake with chocolate glaze and that is one of the ways you can you use your melted chocolate. I use it for any flavour of cake that I make. I also use it for donuts and pastries. If I am using the melted chocolate as glaze I like to keep it thin so it can be spread evenly and I get the mirror-y reflection.
2. Use it as a filling
Who wouldn’t love to make a ganache and use it as filling for cakes to make lava cakes or pastries? If I am using my melted chocolate as filling, I keep it a little thick. Sometimes I even even freeze them and add the frozen chocolate as filling in my cakes or pastries and then bake it.
It was so hard to write this without drooling all over my keypad. But I finally did it. Now I am going to go an reward myself by making chocolate glaze and finish it even before it goes onto my cake.
