What Is Chocolate Ganache Frosting?

Series Summary

Desserts and sweets have always added a little something extra to our diets (and our waistlines.) And though sugar has its rightful place in the nutritional pyramid, cube, or sphere, dessert transcends the idea of simply “eating to live.” Sweet foods and drinks represent what is best in life; and we have learned to associate them with joy and happiness. Yet we all know that these items can destroy our health if consumed in excess. Nonetheless, dessert will continue to hold sway as long as it comes in the form of Grandmas’s chocolate chip cookies, Mom’s brownies, and Dad’s ice cream habit.

In these free dessert cooking classes on video, learn how to make an easy chocolate ganache frosting recipe. Ganache is a French word that means “fool”—and if you make this dessert, you’ll understand why. The mixture of heavy cream and semi-sweet chocolate will leave you stupefied with pleasure, whether served as cake icing, on top of brownies, or as a pastry filling.

Video Transcript

"Hi! On behalf of Expert Village my name is Andrea Spano and I'm going to show you how to make Ganache from my new book "Not Just Desserts." They say that the way to your loved one's heart is through their stomach, and if that's true then the next recipe, chocolate ganache, is going to endear them to you forever. Ganache is a liquid chocolate made with semi-sweet chocolate and heavy cream and a little bit of flavoring added. Today we're going to add a little bit of vanilla extract. Imitation vanilla extract is perfectly okay. You don't have to use pure vanilla extract. It's a little bit more potent. I use either one. Now I'm going to explain to you the very easy recipe of making ganache. We'll use this to coat a cake so that it creates a nice, flat, smooth surface so that you can write on it. It's also a great way to top off brownies without making it rich and sugary, the topping for fudge. So that's what we'll be doing today. "