Last night at my church we had a women's activity called Enrichment. We meet the first Tuesday of each month to socialize and learn from one another. Every woman in our congregation gets the opportunity to volunteer to take a night and run with it - her chosen topic. Sometimes the topic is of a spiritual nature, or the sharing of a particular skill she has such as a foreign language, or money management and investing, or health care, Philippine cooking, perfect pie crust - you get the idea. Well last night a lovely woman named Mary taught us all about chocolate; its history, cultivation, process from bean to bar, health benefits, etc, all by way of a game show type game. And we won prizes - Hershey Kisses! She was a natural game show host; witty, articulate, and prepared. It was a blast and we learned so much. I took the other half of the activity to give a ganache demonstration. Do you know all the wonderful things you can do with ganache? And I love to say it - ganache! If you've never made it, please do so as soon as possible. Here is the recipe and then I'll tell you what to do with it.
Chocolate Ganache
8 oz heavy cream (1 cup)
8 oz semi/bittersweet chocolate broken/chopped
pinch of salt, no more than 1/8 tsp.
Heat the cream in a saucepan until the edges bubble and it is steaming - don't allow to boil. Remove from heat. Drop the salt and chocolate pieces right in and let it sit for a couple minutes and then whisk it and in no time it becomes glossy, dark and gorgeous. And the taste - nectar of the gods!
1. In that warm state you have hot fudge sauce. Or a thick shiny glaze for a cake. Or pour it into tart shells and it will thicken and you have glorious chocolate tarts.
2. Let the ganache cool completely to come to room temperature. Then whip it with a mixer and you have the best, lightest, fluffiest chocolate frosting and filling.
3. Put the ganache you just made into the refrigerator until it is solid and then take spoonfuls and roll them between your cocoa powder dusted hands and you have truffles! Roll these balls in coconut, chopped nuts, sprinkles, or dip them in coating chocolate. Keep chilled until you serve them. These make great gifts and they freeze beautifully. I always seem to have a tub of ganache in the freezer because I can use if to make quick truffles, bring to room temp for frosting, or melt over stove top for a warm sauce.
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| Whipped ganache |
After the ganache tutorial, the women had to try 5 types of brownies and then vote for their favorite without knowing the recipe. These five type of brownies were a cocoa based from scratch recipe, a bar chocolate based scratch recipe, a combo scratch recipe of both cocoa and bar chocolate, a gluten free (flourless) recipe and finally a boxed mix recipe. All the scratch recipes were made with butter and good chocolate. I was appalled when the winner was the box mix! I am aware that most people don't bake brownies from scratch and homemade brownies means made from the box at home. The taste is nostalgia, mom's brownies (from a box), they are dark, moist and creamy, but they taste like fish oil and chemicals!!!! I don't get it. And cocoa brownies take 1 minute longer to make than a box mix and bar brownies take 2 minutes longer to allow the melting of the chocolate. Second place were the gluten free (flourless) brownies from a former post. They were worthy! My favorite was the combo.
The women also compared 6 types of chocolate chips. A cookie is only as good as its chocolate chip I say. And then 18 different brands/bars of chocolate - darks, milks, fruit, spice infused - these were broken up and sampled and savored. Like 70% dark with lemon and ginger. Browned butter pear almond milk chocolate. Intense orange. Stawberry rhubarb milk chocolate (to die for).
Oh! And while we had fun with all this chocolate, we drank the best hot chocolate I have ever had or made. Gallons of whole milk blended and heated with vanilla and bars of different strengths and types of bar chocolate, thick and extremely rich and maintained sipping hot in crockpots. When the night was over, we were all drugged with the happiest of drugs.
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| The initial setup - lots more chairs had to be added |
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| Chocolate chip comparing |
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| Bars before their break up |
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| The Brownies |
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| Mary telling us the game rules |
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| Two contestants with their bells - the young ladies gave out the Kisses |
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