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Alex Rast

at Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:53:16 GMT in -
kc.rr.com>, (Tomas Goodlaxson) wrote :

>Any suggestions for rescuing a failed glaze? The recipe is straight
>forward:
>
>1/2 cup cream
>6 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
>
>Boiled the cream, poured it over the chocolate, mixed.
>
>This time, however, the glaze separated into a thick (but smooth)
>chocolate and a light yellow liquid (some oil, I think; looked like ghee
>but tasted bland). No amount of mixing would blend the two parts
>together again.
>
>The cream was a very rich, unhomogenized local brand that I've used
>successfully many times. The chocolate was new (to me, anyway):
>Ghiradelli 70% Extra Bittersweet.
>
>If you can clue me in to what I did wrong, and have suggestions for
>fixing what I have, I would appreciate your help.
>
One of 2 things: either your cream was too hot (probable) or you stirred
too vigorously. Yes, stirring once a ganache has started to break actually
makes the situation worse, not better. 3:2 ratio? That's a little soft for
a true glaze - it's more of a soft truffle ganache. Firm truffle ganache
(actually somewhat better for truffles IMHO that the soft variant) is 2:1.
Filling ganache (also useful as a frosting, is typically 1:1.

Anyway, back to your situation. You can rescue it. But it will take some
doing. Here's how to proceed. First, warm up the whole mixture again until
everything is relatively fluid in a double-boiler. Now, set the top of the
double boiler in a bath of ice water. Stir slowly and then increasingly
vigorously as the mixture cools. At a certain critical point the whole
thing will smooth nicely. Now - and this is important - *stop stirring*,
and spoon the glaze over the pastry, working quickly. It will firm up fast,
and you'll need to spread it a bit so again the urgency to work quickly is
paramount. The result won't be *quite* as smooth as it would have been had
you succeeded first time, but it will be well within the range of
acceptability.

What you've basically done is retempered the entire mixture. It's the same
process as tempering couverture, applied now to ganache.

In future, remember that you want to heat the cream only to the brink of
boiling - it should never be boiling vigorously - and in fact a slightly
lower temperature like 180F/85C will be perfectly adequate. The finer your
chocolate particles, the better. I use a box grater for best results. Did
you get a Ghirardelli bloc or a bar? If the former, then using the box-
grater method should be convenient. With the bars, yeah, you need to chop
them, so take your time and really get it down nearly to powder. Resist the
urge to use a food processor because the risk of melting and/or detempering
the chocolate is too high. A heavy chef's knife and 15 minutes of work
should get you to the necessary state.

--
Alex Rast

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