Chocolate Ganache

Ganache is the foundation of all chocolate truffles.

A ganache is an emulsion, a fragile suspension of two ingredients that do not naturally mix: fat and liquid. The apocryphal tale is that chocolate ganache was invented in the 19th century in France or Switzerland. Imagine the scene: a busy chocolate kitchen, an alpha-male pastry chef, and a young apprentice who accidentally spills cream into a bowl of melting chocolate. The chef shouts ‘GANACHE!’, which roughly translates as ‘idiot’. The resulting silky smooth emulsion was wondrous, and the name has stuck to this day. It is a pretty frivolous story, though I find that most ‘eureka’ moments come from making mistakes, and occasionally they can be genius ideas, like this one.