Ginger Chocolates

“Warming ginger for chilly autumn afternoons.”

Ginger Chocolates

Ingredients

  • 1 tbsp of black treacle
  • 150g of light muscovado sugar
  • 300ml of double cream
  • 100ml of water
  • 2 tsp ground ginger
  • 100g of crystallised stem ginger
  • 1Kg of 40% milk chocolate (400g of which is for dipping)
  • 4 ginger biscuits

Makes approx. 70 chocolates.

Inspiration

Getting back in the game

I’ve been out of the chocolate making over the summer, mostly because I’ve been making the very website you’re seeing right now. It’s been a very warm one in the UK, and it’s been challenging to temper chocolate when it’s like this.

Wanting something straightforward to help me get back into the game, I found lots of recipe ideas but a colleague at work (thanks Harry) mentioned that he’d like some ginger chocolates in a competition I ran. I’d considered this before too, so ginger it would be. My wife Bekki regularly makes biscuits and bakes involving it. Fragrant and warming, ginger creates an amazing smell that lives on for a while in the house after baking. Why not see how best to evoke the same thing with ginger chocolates.

Recipe ideas

Having found some very simple recipes, I found Paul A Young’s recipe. He’s recipes and chocolates are seriously good. He goes to town on the flavour intensity, which I really like. So his was to the the recipe to follow.

Load up on milk

Having read it through, I was feeling like dark would be better than milk chocolate, but I stuck to it, because clearly the recipe is a tested one. This one uses a serious quantity of milk chocolate, but this happens to be my favourite when paired well with a suitable filling. Paul’s recipe demands Javanese chocolate. I don’t have that, so I used my 40% cocoa solids chocolate from Callebaut. This chocolate is not as sweet as some, and tastes a little richer than 32% that is ubiquitous. I honestly have to hide it away from myself to stop just eating it as is.

A challenge for the blender

One stage in the recipe recommends that the ganache is loaded into a blender and blitzed. I figured I’d warm the glass jar of the blender first, because I was concerned it would make the chocolate start to set too quickly, making it too thick to blend. I was right. My blender struggles when there’s a thick ganache in it. The clue to this is the faint burning smell you get as it slows down.

Instructions

Just to be clear, I can’t claim the rights to these at all from a recipe standpoint, so I’ll point out the original recipe is all Paul A Young’s, and can be found here.

The only thing I changed is that I didn’t decorate with the spices.

  1. Add all the ingredients to a saucepan apart from the chocolate. Bring to the boil and then allow to simmer for about 30 seconds.
  2. Poor into a blender and add 600g chocolate. Blitz for as long as you think your blender will stand it (within reason – a minute is more than enough, a week is a bit too long).
  3. Pour the results into a container and allow to cool to room temp, then put in the fridge to allow to set for approx 2 hours.
  4. Scoop out the set ganache using a teaspoon. Form little balls using your hands, and roll them in a little cocoa powder. This helps later when you need to handle them again and stops them sticking to things. Put them onto baking paper.
  5. Temper your remaining milk chocolate.
  6. Crush the ginger biscuits to a fine powder and bake the crumbs in the oven for 10 minutes to ensure they are dry (this makes them easier to sprinkle).
  7. I found the ganache too soft at this point to dip (I have warm hands), so I’d recommend you put them into the fridge for a while again to firm up just a little.
  8. Now, either dip with a fork, or roll with your hands in the tempered milk chocolate.
  9. Sprinkle the crushed ginger biscuit on the top for decoration.

Next Time

Crushing biscuits for the decoration didn’t really work for me, because it cheapens the look of them. Using the spices recommended in the original recipe would have been much better.

The ganache was seriously soft when dipping, and some leaked. The tempered chocolate of course retracts as it sets, and does squeeze out some of the ganache at the weakest point in such chocolates. I had a few like that. The solution? Perhaps to double-dip, or make a firmer ganache.

Oh, and buy a more beefy blender.