Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi,
in my country people do not like buttercream very much, they prefer cakes with cream made of doublecream and mascarpone, but still are in love with sugarpaste decorations 🙂 for a long time I,ve been using buttercream only for covering/icing cakes before using sugarpaste on them, but now I am in love with Paul,s ganaches and here cames my problem: when I covered my simple circle cake with white chocolate ganache (the cake was with doublecream) under the sugarpaste it cracked. I had a terrible crack on the back of the cake – very deep crack, so deep I could see the sponge through it. Why? Maby I shouldn’t use ganache with so soft cream? Buttercream works good with it, but ganache is so tasty … Have you got any ideas why it happened? I add it happened after the cake had been taken out the fridge.

Hi ewwa

It might have been due to the moisture in double cream reacting with the ganache making it soft underneath. While the cake was in the fridge the ganache stayed firm and stable (contracted) but once you removed it from the fridge the room temperature difference outside must have made the ganache expand and crack. Frozen ganached cakes can sometimes also crack when brought to a warmer temperature. Try keeping the cake in a cardboard cake box when in the fridge. Leave it in the box to come slowly to room temperature for about 15 minutes so it doesn’t get such a big temperature difference shock. I’ve had this happen to me with a cake covered in dark chocolate which I brought out of the freezer. Luckily I managed to remove the ganache bit by bit, warmed it up and reapplied. A lot of work! Perhaps it’s happened to other members too, would be interesting to hear their comments.

thanks for the answer, I’ll follow your advice next time

I have had the genache crack badly on a chocolate cake. Can I still cover in fondant? I have never had this happen before and have used genache under fondant a lot