Like Water for Chocolate

Scribbler100

Since I was a child watching my mother baking, I have known to melt chocolate by putting it in a bowl suspended over hot water. I know not to let it get too hot and I know not to let even a drop of water get into the melted chocolate or it will seize.

Last weekend I was baking a birthday cake for my son who asked if this year I could ice it with a chocolate/butter/water glaze rather than the usual much richer icing (a ganache of melted chocolate mixed with warm cream). I was incredulous but he showed me a video from "Binging with Babish", a Youtube cooking channel he follows where this was done. The relevant part is about 4 mins 25 seconds in.

He also found other recipes online which suggested that this was a viable technique. Like an idiot, I attempted this approach and instantly my 200 grams of melted Green and Black Mayan Gold chocolate seized into a solid gritty mass. I was so annoyed with myself for going against all my experience and instinct. We managed to salvage it to some extent, but it wasn't pretty!

Has anyone here ever successfully made a chocolate glaze incorporating butter and water? Or did I just fall for a giant wind-up?

Ddad

He used hot water after the butter? Id imagine it was boiling hot so there was no temperature clash and the melted butter stabilised the mixture. If there is a substantial temperature differential between the chocolate mixture and the added water this may have caused your mixture to seize. Without knowing every step you took its hard to say.

phormium

Haven't watched the clip but you can mix water and chocolate no problem, it's the same as making a ganache, you can actually make ganache from water and chocolate too rather than cream.

The trick is more in the way you do it, I would not melt the chocolate first and then add a small amount of water because as you have discovered that will seize it but you could heat the water and pour on the chocolate to melt it similar to ganache or you could just put the chocolate and water in a saucepan and heat directly over very low heat obviously.

As regards adding butter you could throw in a know of butter to the water/chocolate mix to make it shinier and you have a glaze.

If you want pure straightforward melted chocolate then you do it the way you always do over hot water or in the microwave but if you want a chocolate sauce/pouring icing/ganache/glaze then best to treat like a ganache recipe for the method.

Scribbler100

I tried to follow the same steps, stirring hot melted butter into the chocolate and then adding the boiling water. Thanks for your reply Ddad, I hadn't thought of the butter as stabilising the mixture. Viewing it from that angle, I reckon my proportions were all wrong. I would have had way more chocolate in mine based on my original recipe. Sometimes I forget that much of cooking and baking is chemistry!

Scribbler100

Thanks phormium, I might try again but be more careful with proportions and use the ganache technique. In future I will run my experiments ahead of time so that I don't compromise the entire appearance of a birthday cake!

phormium

For very quick chocolate sauce for profiteroles I usually throw half a dozen pieces of chocolate from a bar (now also make sure it is good chocolate, not too milky and not dairy milk!) into a mug and add enough water to half cover it and stick in microwave for 30 second blasts.

If too thin add another square of chocolate, if too thick add some more water. It would be more accurate to measure it like ganache but I don't bother anymore Apparently I was making 'ganache' long before I ever heard of the word! Now it's everywhere