- I'm gonna show you how to
make easy chocolate ganache. It's literally two ingredients. You can use it for so many things. And wait until you see what happens when it cools and thickens up, ah. And I'm craving chocolate,
so let's get started. We'll start with the chocolate. Now you can use either chocolate bars and chop them up into fine pieces, or use high-quality chocolate chips. And I found these at Costco, and I love that they have 51% cacao. The important thing is to
measure them correctly. You'll need either 230 grams by weight or measure out 1 1/3 cups in
dry ingredient measuring cups. Pour the chocolate chips into
a large heat-safe mixing bowl. Next, bring your heavy whipping cream to a simmer in a small sauce pan. If you want a ganache that you can drizzle or pour over a cake, use a heavy whipping
cream with a 36% milk fat. I've found that using a
40% heavy whipping cream makes the mixture a little too thick. You wanna stir that occasionally, and as soon as you see a simmer, remove it from the heat and
pour it over your chocolate. Swirl the bowl a little bit to make sure all of the chips are covered. Then cover your bowl either
with a lid or some plastic wrap, and let that rest for five minutes. This should be just enough
time to soften the chocolate, uncover, and immediately start swirling the chocolate working from the center out. It's best to use a silicone
spatula here and not a whisk, because you don't wanna
incorporate too much air bubbles into the ganache. Continue moving outwards as the chocolate melts
and blends into the cream. It's done when the chocolate
has melted completely and incorporated in with the cream. Now we have a silky smooth, beautiful, rich ganache,
and I'm pretty sure this is gonna be the best
taste test of my life, because there are so many great
things you can do with it! First of all, one of my favorite is to
use it as a fruit dip, so we've got some strawberries here. All you do is just let them take a dunk. And you can use this as pretty
much any kind of fruit dip, but I love strawberries 'cause
strawberries and chocolate, there's just something really
lovely about that combination. Ah! (giggles) And if you wanted to
use this as a party dip, you can keep your little bain-marie, if I'm pronouncing that right, over the stove and just
rewarm it if it thickens up. But it'll stay soft for a bit. Look at that, okay. (laughs) Strawberries and some of the
sweet chocolate. (giggles) Okay, here we go. (gentle upbeat music) Mmm. That was like the perfect combination. Match made in heaven! Also, I wanna know, do you
guys eat the green part? I put it in my smoothies, but otherwise I... (green part whooshes) Next, it is so good as a
topping for vanilla ice cream. All right, ooh, that's a
dangerous thing to throw. (laughs) And this is my favorite vanilla ice cream. You know, shameless plug, I love it. Vanilla bean, it has the
little flex of vanilla in it. Yummy yum. All right, and there is nothing like a fresh tub of ice cream. It's like, look at this,
here's my favorite part. When you get the first scoop,
it's like, it's so beautiful. It's like the perfect scoop, that's what makes it so beautiful. Yah, come to mama. (giggles) I told you this would be the
best taste test in my life. I'm probably teasing you
guys like crazy though, huh? All right, look at that. Ah, it's so lovely. And I am one who believes that ice cream is great anytime of year, especially when you drizzle
it with chocolate ganache. Oh, baby, okay, all right. Let's do one more for good measure. (Natasha grunting) I also wanna know if
you guys have good tips for keeping ice cream soft as
it hangs out in the freezer. (Natasha grunting) Sometimes it gets a little hard to scoop. Okay, I think those look pretty amazing. And now let me get to the good part. I think I'll use a spoon for this. Check this out. Oh, hold me. (giggles) The chocolate sauce is
still a little warm, so it'll melt the ice cream just enough. And you'll notice the consistency
of a chocolate ganache will change as it sits. The longer it sits, the thicker it gets. So if you wanna loosen it up to get it more of a drizzling consistency, just put it over the warm water. Husband's over saying, "That's enough." I'm like, "Pff." (laughs) I love my job. (giggles) Here we go, diving in. Ooh, melty ice cream. And that chocolate does
firm up pretty quickly when it's on cold ice cream. Here we go. (gentle upbeat music) Oh my goodness, come on. (laughs) We better hurry up this taste test so I can finish that. (laughs) Okay, and it also works really
well as a glaze for cake. So any kind of cake. You know how they, in the bakeries, they'll get that beautiful
little drizzle down the side? Let me show you. You do wanna use the ganache when it's still soft and drizzle-able, when it still has a little bit of pour, it's still warm, because that's how you get those nice, little drops down the side. (upbeat music) All right, now this next one, a lot of people don't know about it, but if you let the ganache sit
and cool for a couple hours, it'll thicken up nicely, and you can even refrigerate it after that if you want it even thicker, but all you do is beat it into the most wonderful chocolate frosting that you can pipe on cakes and cupcakes. Let me show you. (gentle upbeat music) Oh, yeah. (laughs) All right, and scrape
it down a couple times while you're beating it. You can see it's lightened in color. It is so fluffy and whipped, and it's about doubled in volume I'd say. This will frost a small cake or a dozen cupcakes nicely. And if you want it even thicker than that, and that's pretty thick, look at this, it holds its form,
pretty thick right there. But if you want it even thicker, you can refrigerate it for 15 minutes and it'll whip up even firmer. So next, what I like to do,
transfer that to a piping bag. Got my large star on there. I need a bigger spatula, 'cause this rinky-dink one
is not gonna get me very far. Look at this, yum. Two ingredients, it's like the easiest
chocolate frosting really. So simple, so delicious,
intense chocolate flavor, and you really don't need anything else. Okay, we're gonna
decorate this pound cake. I wanna show you how this puffs, 'cause you can make little
patterns, rosettes, whatever. Decorate to your heart's desire. Look at this. (gentle music) That's a lot of frosting. (laughs) Just making this taste test last. Here we go. (gentle music) Look at the texture on that frosting. Yes, ganache also is frosting. Let's try this, you know what? We're not gonna mess around. We're just gonna go for it. (laughs) (gentle upbeat music) Mm, I am pretty sure I
have chocolate on my face, it doesn't even matter. (laughs) If you've never made
chocolate ganache before, I hope you are convinced. It's just like one of
those wonderful things that every baker should know how to make. There's so many uses for it. Just two ingredients, super easy. Let me know how you guys
like to use ganache. Also, let me know where you
spotted Sharky in the video. And if you have any other recipe requests or cooking tutorials, I would love to hear from you. And we'll see you on the next episode of "Natasha's Kitchen." Bye for now. I'm gonna go finish this
taste test in private. Oh, oh, wait! In our new cookbook, there is a recipe for my
daughter's birthday cake. Super chocolatey. If you're a fan of chocolate,
that's where you can find it. I will link to this in the notes. Okay, where was I? (grunts) (gentle upbeat music)
