Gorgeous Ganache

I haven't cooked much this week through a combination of circumstances but I did make a great discovery on Monday.  It was Bonzo's birthday and Wrigglebottom insisted that we needed to bake him a chocolate cake with chocolate icing in the middle.  As it happened, I had just been flicking through Paul A Young's 'Adventures in Chocolate' (http://www.paulayoung.co.uk/store/) which is very true to its name. So much so that even my chocaholic husband might draw the line at some things.  Paul has a couple of shops, one of which is around the back of the Bank of England.  We stumbled across it when we were in London for my second graduation last year.

Cutting to the chase....I decided that we should make a ganache to sandwich our chocolate sponges together.  In my twenties, Delia's chocolate mousse was my standard dessert for dinner parties and it never went wrong.  Recently,I have had much more patchy results melting chocolate.  Paul's method was perfect!

1)  I used a combination of 200g milk chocolate (Green & Black) plus 50g of 70% dark chocolate from Hotel Chocolat. Break into small pieces (ideal job for small Wrigglebottom fingers) in a medium sized bowl;
2)  Heat 250g of double cream (or 140g of Guernsey double cream,a spoonful of sour cream and a slosh of full cream Guernsey milk, in our case) in a pan with 100g of light muscovado sugar.
3)  Bring to the boil and simmer for 1 minute.
4) Set aside to cool for at least one minute.  This is the real trick and will ensure that the cocoa butter doesn't separate.  You don't want to scald the chocolate but you still want the cream and sugar mixture to be hot enough to melt the chocolate.
5)  Pour the cream mixture onto thte chocolate and stir like mad with a spatula.  Keep on going until all the chocolate has melted and the mixture is thick and glossy.
6)  Spread on your chocolate sponge base and sandwich together.
7)  Use royal is=cing and a whole load of food colouring to turn in to Saturn(well it was his birthday cake).

If you leave the ganache in the fridge for a couple of  hours to set you can then make truffles with it.

Molto bene!