Sunflowers and Icing

Today’s post is mainly about icing, specifically chocolate ganache, a versatile icing that can be poured on a cake while runny as a glossy covering (as I did for my wedding cake) or used when more solid as a piped icing. To illustrate its use here is a picture of some sunflower cupcakes I made the impressionists garden party I previously made gingerbread ladies for.

I dyed flaked almonds yellow with food colouring and left them to dry on greaseproof paper.

Then having put a dollop of chocolate ganache on the cupcakes I put the almonds around the edge.

The recipe

Chocolate Ganache -  Makes 250g mixture enough to fill and cover a 8 inch cake

175g / 6 oz           Plain Chocolate broken into pieces

4 tablespoons    Single Cream

50g / 2oz              Butter  in cubes

2                            Egg yolks

1 tablespoon      Rum

I adapt this as given my very fecund friends I don’t like to add the egg yolks in case I am feeding pregnant women ditto for the rum. Also if I haven’t got single cream in the fridge I milk instead but a bit less volume. Apart from that you can see I follow the recipe closely...

Instructions

1. Beat the chocolate with the cream in a small pan over a gentle heat
2. Cool slightly then beat in the butter bit by bit
3. Beat in the egg yolks and rum if using

Either use runny or wait for it to cool and beat for a thick pipe-able icing