Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

The ganache appears to harden a lot, and this is the same ganache used between layers. My question is how does this cut and how appealing is it to eat?

Hi CarriesCakes

The ganache type used in the tutorials is made using chocolate which contains 50% cocoa solids and double cream. It sets suffciently to seal the cake to form a good platform for it to be covered with sugarpaste yet remain soft enough to slice through without being brittle. Both innner and outter layers of ganache are pleasant to consume. Some people prefer to make a different ratio ganache for the filling so it’s not quite as rich, others opt for non ganache fillings.

Hi MIWL the ganache was a bit firm and next time i will do as you suggested and add more cream to the ganache that will be for the filling. Paul’s chocolate cake baked beautifully and the cut offs were light and crumbly. I put some of the extra cake in the freezer. However, the finished iced cake remained quite firm even when left out of the fridge for some time. The cake i had put in the freezer a couple of weeks before was light and crumbly when thawed.

Hi Barbara

I’ve got a small recipe for soft ganache suitable for piping and filling in my blog here:

Carry on Ganaching! New Charts and Recipes

Try it next time if you want a softer ganache. 🙂

Thank you. Any idea why the cake was so firm once it was ganached and iced. The extra cake from the freezer had nothing on it and was lovely and soft? I baked it on the monday, gananched it on the wednesday and iced it on the friday. It was cut and first eaten the following tuesday.

Was it the cake that was firm or was it the ganache? If it was the cake, it is possible it just needed a couple of days to soften, sometimes chocolate cake improves after a couple of days.. If it was the ganache, it’s possible it was the quality of the chocolate. Some chocolates do set firmer than others depending on cocoa content or if they contain waxes or oils.
Some cakes improve from being frozen, they absorb the freezer moisture and soften. Chocolate mud cakes are one of those types. I’m not a huge fan of freezing cake but must say I love the texture of defrosted mud cakes.