axeldbljumps said:
Butter, crisco, p. sugar and an eggwhite gives you a "simple or American butter cream vs. a french or Italian buttercream. Also, Ayerton, I am confused. If a ganache is more a "chocolate sauce, how can it be piped. Unless, you are piping the ganache when it is cold and a solid. Is that what you are doing? Very interesting! I never thought of doing that. I just found my next project, trying to pipe cold ganache! Brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ganache is a wonderful versatile thing that can be sauce-like and thus pourable (to glaze a cake, for instance), or can be much thicker and thus pipeable. One of the differences between those two consistencies is temperature, but the other is the ratio of cream to chocolate.
Meaning: let's say you want a spreadable, pipeable ganache. To make it you have hot cream and shaved (or chipped, or broken) chocolate (ratios for which you get from a ganache recipe specifically intended for spreading/piping). The two are stirred together to combine them, completely melt the chocolate, and cool the mixture a bit. Then, if memory serves (forgive but I'm doing this off the top of my head right now -- can get back to you wish specifics if you wish) you chill the mixture until it's the appropriate thickness to spread or pipe.
I've made it in the more traditional way by hand-stirring, and I've made it the food-processor way (instructions from "The Cake Bible" -- a book I have some gripes about, but none regarding ganache). Both produced 100% satisfactory results, and both were easy.
From there on in, it behaves very much like a soft, pure chocolate would, i.e. if you refrigerate it it will get very hard / if you leave it out in a coolish room it will be somewhat softer / and if you leave it out in a hot area, it will melt.
It has a fancy name, but it's NOT difficult and it is truly light years away from the stuff we all grew up with!