Ganache: Tips, Techniques & Troubleshooting

[pastrygirl]

@Jim D. I'm not familiar with that recipe, had you made it and piped it before? Do you put a chocolate "foot" on your ganache slab before cutting?   (a thin solid layer so the fork won't stick)

 

I'd say your options are melt it down and add more chocolate or melt it down, cool, then whip/beat until it starts to stiffen before slabbing.

Edited October 30, 2023 by pastrygirl (log)

[Jim D.]

32 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

@Jim D. I'm not familiar with that recipe, had you made it and piped it before? Do you put a chocolate "foot" on your ganache slab before cutting?   (a thin solid layer so the fork won't stick)

 

I'd say your options are melt it down and add more chocolate or melt it down, cool, then whip/beat until it starts to stiffen before slabbing.

 

Yes, I have made it before, always piping it into shells (so whether it was sticky or not never showed up).  Yes, there was a foot, but the pieces still stuck.  The dipping may be easier once I get a large bowl of tempered chocolate and can dip each piece deeper into it.  The test pieces still show no sign of anything amiss.  If that is still the case tomorrow, I think I will go ahead and try more pieces and see what happens.  Even if they are coated in chocolate, they can still be melted down for other options.

 

Thanks for the ideas.

[Jim D.]

21 hours ago, Jim D. said:

The test pieces still show no sign of anything amiss.  If that is still the case tomorrow, I think I will go ahead and try more pieces and see what happens.  Even if they are coated in chocolate, they can still be melted down for other options.

 

Another day in this saga.  The test pieces still looked fine today, whereas the squares awaiting enrobing still were sticky to the touch.  With this conflicting evidence, I decided to forge ahead.  I got all 120 pieces dipped without major incident.  They didn't stick to the dipping fork.  I let them crystallize for a while, then began removing them from parchment to put them in boxes for Christmas freezing.  They still looked OK.  Then I noticed some shiny spots on the parchment, and these began to increase.  Whatever the syrupy component in the ganache may be, it was determined to leak out of the shells.  The squares (minus their decorative almond) are now sealed in bags awaiting further attempts at salvage.  It is quite discouraging--not just because I have one less finished Christmas item but mainly because I have absolutely no idea what went wrong.  And, alas, Chef Jean-Pierre is not reachable...by any method I am aware of.  One small consolation: the ganache is quite delicious.

[Kerry Beal]

2 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

 

Another day in this saga.  The test pieces still looked fine today, whereas the squares awaiting enrobing still were sticky to the touch.  With this conflicting evidence, I decided to forge ahead.  I got all 120 pieces dipped without major incident.  They didn't stick to the dipping fork.  I let them crystallize for a while, then began removing them from parchment to put them in boxes for Christmas freezing.  They still looked OK.  Then I noticed some shiny spots on the parchment, and these began to increase.  Whatever the syrupy component in the ganache may be, it was determined to leak out of the shells.  The squares (minus their decorative almond) are now sealed in bags awaiting further attempts at salvage.  It is quite discouraging--not just because I have one less finished Christmas item but mainly because I have absolutely no idea what went wrong.  And, alas, Chef Jean-Pierre is not reachable...by any method I am aware of.  One small consolation: the ganache is quite delicious.

Seance?

 

 

[Jim D.]

14 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

Seance?

 

 

Do you know someone who could arrange it?  It might be worth it.  I believe today is an appropriate day for such adventures.

[Jim D.]

@Kerry Beal, do you have any ideas as to why the ganache turned syrupy and leaky and refused to dry out properly?

[Kerry Beal]

6 hours ago, Jim D. said:

@Kerry Beal, do you have any ideas as to why the ganache turned syrupy and leaky and refused to dry out properly?

If it's the recipe I'm thinking of it might just be the nature of it - can you PM me the ingredients?

[Becky R]

On 9/6/2021 at 4:23 PM, Jim D. said:

I make a filling that aims to mimic the tastes and texture of crème brûlée.  To get the crunch, I make a caramel (just sugar and water), let it harden, then grind it in a small food processor.  I put a 1/2 tsp. or so in the bottom of each cavity, then cover it with melted chocolate (with a little coconut oil to keep it from hardening too much).  On top of that I add a vanilla butter ganache (Greweling's eggnog but with no nutmeg or rum, just more vanilla).  The issue is the caramel bits.  In my notes on this recipe, I say sternly, "Don't attempt this on a humid day."  But recently it seems, regardless of the humidity, the ground caramel sticks together and forms a more or less solid mass in the bottom of the cavities before I can seal it with the white chocolate.  It makes for a less than ideal mouthfeel, more chewy than crunchy.  Can anyone think of something that might keep the bits separate?  Confectioner's sugar maybe?  I tried it, and it made a mess.  Am I simply limited to making this only in the dead of winter when the humidity is something like 30%?

I wonder if you mixed it with something that was freeze dried... it might help absorb any excess moisture that is causing the clumping.  I've freeze dried eggnog before... it can then be powdered and would snatch up moisture.... would something like that work?  I'm close to you and owe you a favor for all the info you gave me the other day

[Jim D.]

@Kerry Beal@pastrygirl I got back to the Wybauw pear and almond ganache discussed a few days ago.  You will recall that I had already enrobed it in dark chocolate when I noticed something like syrup leaking out.  I experimented with melting down 50g of the enrobed pieces and adding 10g of melted cocoa butter (the idea was to add cocoa butter to balance the sugar but not add flavor that would cover up the delicate pear).  It turned out that 10g was far too much--the ganache improved in texture but was far too solid.  Therefore (I guessed) I was on the right track, but the dark chocolate used for enrobing might be enough to eliminate the stickiness.  So today I melted down all the enrobed pieces.  The resulting ganache was very fluid, but a sample left in the fridge for a few minutes showed that it would eventually be OK.  I had every chocolatier's dream-come-true: a ganache easily pipeable that eventually crystallizes (and yes, the Aw is OK--0.68).  I was even able to use the confectionery funnel (one of my best purchases) to deposit the ganache into shells.  It worked, so I thank both of you for your suggestions.  I will, however, make a note in the recipe NOT to try enrobing it again.  Never tempt the chocolate gods to strike the same recipe twice.

[Jim D.]

3 hours ago, Becky R said:

I wonder if you mixed it with something that was freeze dried... it might help absorb any excess moisture that is causing the clumping.  I've freeze dried eggnog before... it can then be powdered and would snatch up moisture.... would something like that work?  I'm close to you and owe you a favor for all the info you gave me the other day

 

Good to see you on eGullet.  From our phone conversation I know you have already been down many of the rabbit holes on this forum, so it's too late to warn you about that pitfall.

 

Using freeze-dried eggnog sounds like an interesting possibility.  I'm currently swamped with Thanksgiving and Christmas chocolates and so don't have time to experiment, but I would like to do so after December 25.    After the post quoted above, I took a couple of Kalle Jungstedt's online courses, and he has a section on cookie layers.  Many people call them praliné layers, but they don't have to contain nuts.  So when I needed a crème brûlée bonbon for an October wedding (in my area October now sometimes seems like August), I tried Jungstedt's idea.  I had some of the ground caramel in the freezer.  I mixed that with melted white chocolate and cocoa butter plus a little feuilletine, then piped that on top of the vanilla ganache.  It worked surprisingly well--the caramel bits maintained some of their crunch and did not have a chance to clump together, and the "mouth impression" of the layer was close to the caramel crunch of the original dessert.  The layer, however, ends up on the bottom, rather than the top, of the bonbon.  Aside from that minor issue, the layer doesn't have the close approximation to a crème brûlée caramel layer that the ground caramel alone does.

[Chocolate_touu]

Hello everyone, i want to make strawberry chocolate bonbons how to make a simple ganache i want it with 2 weeks shelf life , any recipe ?

[Kerry Beal]

1 hour ago, Chocolate_touu said:

Hello everyone, i want to make strawberry chocolate bonbons how to make a simple ganache i want it with 2 weeks shelf life , any recipe ?

Tell me what you are picturing - dark chocolate with strawberry - white chocolate - a strawberry buttercream with minimal to no chocolate in it?

[pastrygirl]

5 hours ago, Chocolate_touu said:

Hello everyone, i want to make strawberry chocolate bonbons how to make a simple ganache i want it with 2 weeks shelf life , any recipe ?

 

Strawberry is a delicate flavor - Valrhona has a strawberry 'inspiration' but I found it to be one of their weaker forrmulae.  I think a white chocolate butter ganache made with strawberry jam & liqueur might work better.  Sorry, no recipe but Greweling covers butter ganache if you have his book.

Edited January 29 by pastrygirl (log)

[Kerry Beal]

1 hour ago, pastrygirl said:

 

Strawberry is a delicate flavor - Valrhona has a strawberry 'inspiration' but I found it to be one of their weaker forrmulae.  I think a white chocolate butter ganache made with strawberry jam & liqueur might work better.  Sorry, no recipe but Greweling covers butter ganache if you have his book.

And a butter ganache would have more than a 2 weeks shelf life so you're golden on that!

[Jim D.]

8 hours ago, Chocolate_touu said:

Hello everyone, i want to make strawberry chocolate bonbons how to make a simple ganache i want it with 2 weeks shelf life , any recipe ?

 

What I do for my strawberry Easter eggs is to pipe in a relatively small layer of strawberry pâte de fruit, then on top of it a layer of Kerry's strawberry buttercream with added natural strawberry flavoring from Amoretti.  The PdF adds a lot of flavor.  My Aw measurement was 0.73, which is not bad.

[Chocolate_touu]

4 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

 

Strawberry is a delicate flavor - Valrhona has a strawberry 'inspiration' but I found it to be one of their weaker forrmulae.  I think a white chocolate butter ganache made with strawberry jam & liqueur might work better.  Sorry, no recipe but Greweling covers butter ganache if you have his book.

 

7 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

Tell me what you are picturing - dark chocolate with strawberry - white chocolate - a strawberry buttercream with minimal to no chocolate in it?

White chocolate shell with white chocolate ganache

[Kerry Beal]

So best of both worlds - why don't you do the strawberry PDF (or seedless strawberry jam) backed with Greweling's butter ganache. 

[Chocolate_touu]

18 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

So best of both worlds - why don't you do the strawberry PDF (or seedless strawberry jam) backed with Greweling's butter ganache. 

Grewlign’s butter ganache in his book ?

 

Edited January 30 by Chocolate_touu (log)

[Jim D.]

47 minutes ago, Chocolate_touu said:

Grewlign’s butter ganache in his book ?

 

It's on page 204 of the second edition.  You can substitute something else for the balsamic vinegar (such as a reduced strawberry purée or good-quality strawberry flavoring or compound).  According to Greweling's notes on butter ganache, the mixture is very forgiving about the amount of liquid you add.  Just one caution: you may find the taste (strawberry in this case) somewhat muted in a butter ganache--the price you pay, I guess one could say, for having a longer shelf life.