What Is Chocolate Ganache?
Ganache is a mixture of chocolate and cream typically but other types of fat can be used in place of cream like butter, coconut cream or palm oil. Ganache may have additions like eggs or sugar as well as glucose or honey to help smooth the texture. Chocolate ganache is used in making coating cakes or as a truffle filling and pastry cream filling.
What Is A Broken Ganache?
A broken ganache is where the fat and the chocolate separate and become gritty. It is also known as a split ganache or seized ganache. See this photo:
How To Fix A Broken Ganache?
Santa Barbara Chocolate is a high quality, high cocoa butter content chocolate, so it requires more delicate procedures when working with it as opposed to low fat high sugar chocolate chips.
If in your recipe preparation the ganache splits or seizes you can fix the problem quickly and easily with these recommendations below.
CHOCOLATIER TIP: When making ganache add the unmelted chocolate to the heated cream mixture and stir constantly. This will minimize ganache issues.
Easy Ganache Fixing:
1) Easy ganache problem fix and the one I teach our chocolatiers as the first thing to try (use an electric hand whisk):
2) To be safe while whisking you can also add a little honey or glucose - just a touch.
3) If it looks like the ganache is starting to split again, add a little warm milk and whisk mixing well - this for sure will solve any issues.
The cause of the split ganache is due to the amount of total fat and fluid ratio in the ganache. In the future you can reduce the total fat content in your recipe by cutting butter and replacing with milk or going with a lower fat chocolate. But first try the recommendation of adding unmelted chocolate to the heated cream mixture and stirring constantly. This likely will solve your problem.