Main Ingredients in Ganache and Their Roles

Ganache ingredients fall into two main categories: solids and liquids.

Liquids include:

Dairy - heavy cream, milk, evaporated milk, etc.
Fruit purées
Infusions such as coffee or tea
Alcohol
Water
Water from sugars

Solids can be divided into fats and non-fat solids:

Fats -

Butterfat
Cocoa butter
Others

Non-fat Solids -

Cocoa
Sugars
Flavoring agents such as spices and vanilla beans
Milk solids

Some ingredients contribute both liquids and solids, some contribute more than one kind of solid. For example, a sugar such as glucose syrup contributes both water and solids in the form of sugar; milk chocolate is composed of sugar, cocoa butter, and milk and cocoa solids.

Where to Find Information About Ganache Ingredients

You will want to gather as much information as possible about your ingredients to balance your recipes properly or to understand better what's going on "under the hood" in a given recipe.

For professional chefs working in a commercial kitchen, spec sheets are available for almost all products. Manufacturers are required to create these and make them available. You can contact your salesperson, distributor, or manufacturer, and they will provide you with a copy of the spec sheet.

Here, we have an example of a data sheet or "spec sheet" for glucose syrup. You can see that the percentage of "dry extract" (solids) is 79.2%. A little simple math tells us that the syrup is, then, about 21% water. Another key piece of information here is the "equivalent dextrose," which is listed as 37.5%. This will become important when considering the types of sugars used in ganache (discussed in other articles)

Other sources of information include the USDA FoodData Central database (this lists common grocery store ingredients but not specialty ingredients such as sorbitol, glucose, etc.), confectionery books and trusted publications, and plain old Google searches.

Many manufacturers and distributors are making their data sheets available on their websites, and these will show up in an internet search, which can be very handy for home-based chefs and others who purchase ingredients through online retailers and other third parties.

How Ingredients Affect a Ganache Recipe

Setting flavor aside, the various types of ganache ingredients affect a recipe in two ways: texture and shelf life.

		Texture	Shelf Life
Cocoa butter _{contributes to firmness and mouthfeel}	as percentage increases	becomes firmer	N/A
Dairy fat _{contributes to softness and mouthfeel}	as percentage increases	becomes softer	N/A
Liquid Oils _{contribute to softness and mouthfeel}	as percentage increases	becomes softer	N/A
Sugars _{contribute to softness and extend shelf life}	as percentage increases	becomes softer	gets longer
Dry Substances _{contribute to texture and extend shelf life}	as percentage increases	becomes firmer	gets longer
Water _{contributes to texture and shortens shelf life}	as percentage increases	becomes softer	gets shorter