Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi
I made this cake ( which turned out ok and was well received) but resorted to chic butter cream, which did not allow such a sharp result as your own cake. I made an absolute hash of the ganache. Used expensive dark choc which tasted vile, but I caused the mixture to split and become VERY oily ( using an American recipe ( why didnt I look on your site???). Can I buy ganache, or should I try again? I know I could do better with the car using ganache. You video , which I bought, and was the first I’ve used in 30 years of designing and making cakes, was nothing less than excellent.
What do you think. Give up on ganache. I wasted so much time and money, or try again?
Regards
Maureen

Hi Maureen

Don’t let this one experience put you off making ganache! The problem was the extra dark chocolate and not you. Because it contained a higher % of cocoa solids, a higher ratio of cream would have given better results.

For ganache as seen in the tutorial, you’ll need chocolate which contans approx 50% cocoa solids using 2: 1 ratio of chocolate and 1 part cream. Use Paul’s free tutorial for making ganache here:

Using Ganache

For different quanities, select the ganache calculator here:

Cake Calculators

and if the ganache splits again, look here for a fix:

Oily ganache!!!

… as you’ll see , you’re in good company, it happens to almost all of us at sometime or another 🙂

For more information on ganache, just type in the search box (to the right of your name) ‘ganache’ to see all sorts of questions and answers which you might find useful in the future.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your next attempt and let us know how you get on. Post back if you need more information. 🙂