Another thing that I made for my dinner party last month was a tasty chocolate-orange trifle, which I topped with homemade ganache.
If you've never made your own ganache, you simply MUST try it. It's so much easier than homemade icing, and for al its elegance, doesn't cost much to make either. Even if you're afraid of melting chocolate, you can easily do this. My friend Martha Stewart shows you how on her website
here.
My recipe is a tiny bit easier, but a basic ganache recipe is super easy to begin with!
First, get yourself a 12(ish) ounce bag of chocolate chips -- milk or bittersweet, it doesn't really matter. Use what you like. For a firmer ganache, use the whole bag; for a looser one, use about 2/3 of the bag.
Whirl the chips around in your food processor until they're nothing but chocolate dust.
Pour the dust into a good-sized mixing bowl. Have your spoon or whisk ready!
Microwave a cup of heavy cream until it boils, then whisk the cream into the chocolate dust until everything is completely melted together and the mixture is smooth and glossy. Yum!
Let it cool for a minute or two if you're drizzling it or using as a dip or coating. Then feel free to dip, drizzle, whatever! Or you can do it like I did, and pour the entire thing over a trifle.
Admire the smooth, glossy surface. Fantasize about being the size of a
Barbie doll and ice-skating on a frozen pond of ganache. Aww yeah!
If you're making something that requires harder ganache, put it in the fridge until it's firmer. When it's harder, it can be used to make your own truffles, or to frost or fill a cake.
Lately I've had a bit of what I like to ca "school lunch nostalgia." One of my most longed-for items has been a simple confnection made of peanut butter and melted chocolate. This was called "peanut butter candy" in my school, though many others referred to this as "peanut butter bars." You need:
