The frosting - Choc Ganache

Part 4 of the Drum cake series
There were 2 type of frosting made for this cake - one the Choc Ganache and another - the butter cream. The Choc Ganache was for the overall and the butter cream is for the piping. I'm not too sure why I didn't take any photos of the butter cream process, so I'll only be talking about the Ganache. I reckong that's because Ganache was a scary thing for me in the past and I want to document this so this can help us; the new ones in the baking department :)
Here's what you'll need:
280 gms cooking / baking choc
1/2 cup cream (I use Paul's Thickened Cream)
What you'll need to do:

1) Prepare the ingredients - chop chop chop the choc into tiny pieces. You will need them to be small in order to melt it better. Throw in the choc into a bowl.

Heat up the cream till boiling point. Make sure you do not leave the fire, as with so little qty (only half a cup), it boils rather fast. Oh, make sure it's low fire as well.
Once it's boiled - you might wanna make sure that it's 100% boil, pour into the bowl with the chocolate and SSTTTIIIRRRRRR at lightning speed. You have to work fast on this, as you'll want the chocs to melt into nice liquid before the cream chills off.

Sorry for the blurry photo - this is to show you how fast I was stirring :) When I first made the Ganache long ago, I was afraid of stirring and I ended up with lumps here and there in the choc.



After stirring - you have yourself a nice warm bowl of ganache. Congrats!!! You made it!!!
There are a few styles you can use the ganache for.
1) Smooth flowing frosting - when the Ganache is still warm, immediately pour over cooled cake. You'll get a lovely melted coating which will flow to the sides. The trick is to pour in the middle and spread out to the sides.
2) Yummy chocolaty light filling - let the ganache cool and pop it into your mixer and beat till light and fluffy. You now can use this as the filling in between cake layers. Imagine - light and fluffy chocolate ganache topped up with freshly cut this slices of strawberry... YUMMM
3) Thick frosting - the longer you set the ganache aside (i.e. cool), the thicker it becomes. You can then use this to spread on the cake and make a thicker version of #1 above. Oh, but this step will not yield that "smooth" looking ganache I was talking about in #1.
Okay... right now, I can't think of anything else to write about for this Ganache (it's Monday morning - do you blame me??) Signing off with lots of love!