A Little Bit Of Milk Is All You Need To Fix Broken Ganache

Knowing how to make a good ganache — a mixture of chocolate and cream melted together — is a must for anyone who enjoys home baking. After all, it's the perfect addition for desserts such as truffles, cakes, tarts, and more. However, once you start making ganache, you may come across an annoying problem: broken ganache. Broken ganache is when the mixture becomes grainy or oily because the chocolate and cream weren't sufficiently emulsified and have separated. Luckily, there's an easy way to fix this.

To fix the broken ganache, put it in a saucepan over low heat and begin whisking the mixture again — and, this time, add in a little bit of warm milk. As long as you keep whisking at a consistent pace while adding the milk, your ganache will be fixed in no time.

While it's always helpful to keep this tip in mind in case things go south during the baking process and you end up with a broken ganache, there are also some tips you can keep in mind to try to prevent this from happening in the first place.

When making ganache, there's actually a stirring mistake that causes oily ganache: overstirring. Once the chocolate and the cream are properly mixed, it may seem like a good idea to keep stirring for good measure, but this is actually the opposite of what you want. Another thing to keep in mind is, when you're heating up the cream on the stovetop, make sure that it stays at a simmer instead of getting to a boil. otherwise, the too-hot cream will cause the fat in the chocolate to overheat, which will separate the two ingredients.

Additionally, some recipes call for you to heat up the chocolate, as well as the cream, and blend the two heated ingredients. But, you can actually pour the heated cream over room temperature chocolate — as is advised in Tasting Table's muscovado chocolate ganache recipe. The recipe also calls for full chocolate bars — not chocolate chips — which is another tip to keep in mind. This is because chocolate chips have less cocoa butter than regular chocolate and are more heat-resistant.