Recipes from the Collection of Mark and Danielle Hughes

Basic Ganash

12 ounces chocolate, in small pieces (a 12-ounce bag good-quality semisweet chocolate chips, or 12 ounces semisweet or bittersweet bar chocolate, cut or broken into bits)
1 cup whipping cream (use the real thing)

Put chocolate into a heavy bowl or grind it in a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Pour cream into a saucepan and heat on medium heat until bubbles form around edge of pan. Slowly pour hot cream into chocolate, stirring constantly (or running the food processor). Do not whip. You're trying to create an emulsion (like mayonnaise), not beat air into the mixture. You should have about 2 cups of creamy, smooth chocolate ganache. It can be stored in the pan, or any covered container, at room temperature or in the refrigerator, for up to 2 weeks.

Variations: Try adding a teaspoon or 2 of flavoring to the cream as it heats, such as vanilla, rum, whiskey or orange liqueur.

Ganache - France's versatile, sweet delight

By S.L. Bachman, Special to the Mercury News 5/5/04

Here's a French chef's secret: Chocolate and scalded cream, stirred together, can be used for truffles, frosting, glaze, sauce for ice cream, a decadent chocolate fondue and, as I discovered, a creamy spread to make familiar cookies seem new.

In a word, it's ganache, pronounced ga-NAHSH.

Like the best of things French -- from haute cuisine sauces to the day-to-day fashions Parisians wear -- ganache combines a few fine ingredients into something elegant and refined, but also versatile, inexpensive and practical.

My ganache introduction came thanks to my sister, Laura, a Paris-trained cook who specializes in desserts. In her words, ``Ganache is the basis of all things delicious and wonderful.''

At Christmas, Laura makes dozens of truffles for gifts. During the rest of the year, she warms ganache to pour over ice cream, or thickens ganache with butter to spread on one kind of cake and glaze another. On Sunday mornings, ganache becomes the filling for breakfast crepes. 

She makes more than she needs for one recipe, and leaves the pan on her counter for up to two weeks. In December, I sneaked a tablespoon-sized ganache sample into warm milk, stirred for a while, and enjoyed a cup of creamy hot chocolate.  In Girl Scout cookie season, I spread ganache on a shortbread cookie. The creamy ganache was a perfect foil for the crisp, plain cookie.

Basic ganache calls for one part scalded cream to two parts chocolate.

The easiest and cheapest thing is to use a bag of good-quality chocolate chips, but 12 ounces of a basic bar of semisweet or bittersweet chocolate works, too. For chocolates with a higher percentage of cacao (that's what the number on some chocolate labels refers to) you'll use more cream. Anything over 60 percent could require adjustment.

I haven't had a failure yet, but perhaps I've been lucky so far.

Making really good ganache is not easy, said Alice Medrich, the Berkeley-based chocolate authority. Ganache is the foundation for the chocolate truffles that Medrich fell in love with in France and later popularized in the United States. Made improperly, Medrich warns, ganache can curdle, or develop unsightly and off-tasting effects, such as sugar crystals on the surface.

``If you ate a truffle like that,'' Medrich says, ``you'd think, ewww.''

Medrich's and my sister's recipes call for the cream to be heated first, poured over pieces of chocolate and then stirred.

Other recipes call for the chocolate and cream to be melted together, but Medrich warns that the cream won't get hot enough to scald. Those recipes make a ganache that should be eaten right away.

I wondered why my sister's ganache doesn't spoil when kept at room temperature. There is more than one reason, says Harold McGee, the Bay Area author of ``On Food and Cooking'' (Collier). Scalding cream, which kills bacteria, is one thing that keeps the cream-and-chocolate emulsion stable, McGee says.  The sugar is also a factor. ``Chocolate has a lot of sugar, and when it gets concentrated, it is a preservative,'' he says.
``And the cocoa particles themselves absorb a lot of moisture, which makes it harder for microbes to survive.''  Cocoa also contains phenolic compounds, molecules that cacao beans have developed to kill microbes.

Ganache was invented in the mid-19th century, according to ``Larousse Gastronomique,'' the bible of French cookery. And yet, ganache wasn't a household word in American sweets cooking until the 1970s or 1980s, after French candies and pastries gained popularity in the United States.
Medrich touched off the chocolate truffle craze in the 1970s. She had moved to Berkeley after living in Paris and tried to re-create on her new kitchen's stove the truffles made by her Paris landlady. That simple pot of ganache sparked Medrich's career, just as a batch of ganache can evolve into myriad delectable desserts.

Ganache is an emulsion, Medrich said and, like mayonnaise, requires close attention to details such as the heat of the cream and the vigor of stirring. Her book, ``Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales From a Life in Chocolate'' (Artisan, $35), details varying ratios of cream depending on the fat and dry solids contents of various chocolates.

Overlook a detail, and the emulsion can fail. Sugar crystals are only one possible result. Others: ``the surface may be mottled and dull or marred by streaks or puddles of yellow fat.'' Ewww.

When I called to ask for hints for making ganache at home, Medrich said, ``I am very hesitant with the simple explanation. It doesn't go far enough. It's not interesting enough. ``Like cookies -- it's deceptively simple.''

How deliciously French!

How to use ganache

Truffles: Refrigerate ganache until firm. Scoop about a teaspoon (or use a melon baller), dip in powdered cocoa and roll with your hands into a ball. Refrigerate. The truffles can be eaten at this stage, but be sure to eat them quickly as the powdered cocoa quickly absorbs moisture and loses its light brown color.

Or, melt bittersweet chocolate, bitter chocolate or couverture chocolate in a double boiler. Let it cool slightly so that you can touch it comfortably. Cover the small ball of cold ganache with the melted chocolate by dipping, painting, rolling, pouring, etc. If desired, roll in nuts or coconut. Refrigerate. The outer layer of chocolate should harden. You should be able to bite through the crisp exterior to reach the creamy, cool interior.

Ice cream sauce: Warm ganache and pour over ice cream for a creamy chocolate sauce.

Chocolate fondue: Warm ganache and use as a dip for fruit such as strawberries or sliced bananas, or plain cake.

Hot cocoa or chocolate milk: Heat 1 cup milk per serving. Stir in about 1 tablespoon ganache per serving until smooth. Drink warm or refrigerate.

Chocolate glaze: Melt ganache slowly in a saucepan and, while stirring, thin with a stream of cream until glaze is the consistency of very heavy cream.

Frosting: Beat 1 stick ( 1/2 cup) soft butter into 1 batch ganache.

Crepe filling: Spread room-temperature ganache on one side of a freshly made warm crepe. Fold or roll crepe.

Cake filling: Warm 1 batch ganache and whisk in 1 1/2 cups additional cream.

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