Decadent Chocolate Frostings for All Occasions

1. Welcome!: I'm guessing you clicked on this course because it's about chocolate frosting who doesn't love chocolate. I don't know anybody who doesn't. I'm Amy Kimmel. I went from being a cake decorator to a pastry chef to a work from Home Online instructor. I spent years and professional kitchens. I'm now. I'm so happy to share all of that knowledge with my students in this course. Gonna take a look at different types of ganache as well as an old fashioned fudge frosting , and they're all based off of you guessed it chocolate. I so excited to share all of this because talk wit frosting, no matter what the occasion, is usually pretty safe. It's great to use even on wedding cakes. You can use it on cheesecakes at a nice chocolate fudge. Teoh some brownies. There are downloadable recipes, and you can also print them off. Most of the recipes have extra variations, so you can try out different flavors on play around in your own kitchen. So whether you're a complete beginner or you've been baking for years, I really think there's a little bit of something for everybody in this course. I hope you enroll, and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. 2. Equipment: I love hopping into the kitchen and coming up with new and interesting flavor combinations , but I wouldn't be able to do that if I didn't have the proper equipment for this course. I'm gonna give you a list of some basic supplies that you should have in your kitchen to make sure that you can complete the course with ease and go on in the future. Making new and interesting flavor combinations yourself. The first thing I recommend that you have is a stand mixer or hand mixer, something that is electric powered is going to make your life a lot easier. You wanna have a whip, a paddle and a dough hook attachment. It's important to have all three. To complete all the recipes in this course. You definitely going to need a thermometer. A candy thermometer works well, and you can usually even pick those up at the grocery store. You'll want rubber spatulas, ones that air flexible but not too flimsy. You'll want a scale just a regular kitchen scale. You can purchase a small one from an online store or even check your grocery store as well . Sometimes I've seen scales while I'm out doing my regular shopping. You'll need dry measuring cups and wet measuring cups, measuring spoons, a double boiler set up of some sort, or just using your mixing bull set over a pan of simmering water. As long as the bowl doesn't touch the bottom of your pot, you'll also want Ziploc bags or airtight storage containers. In case you're not gonna be using the frostings right away, you'll also want basic supplies that you probably already have plastic wrap and bowls to prepare your meals on class and set up all of your ingredients to be ready to go. 3. Mise en Place: If you already are familiar with museum plots, go ahead and skip over this lesson. It will just be repetitive for you if you're completely new to the term. I wanted to include a lesson so you understand what it ISS and also know the importance of building the foundation before you get started in the kitchen baking or making frostings. Maison pauses a French term, meaning everything in its place, basically having all of your equipment and ingredients in front of you in your workspace, ready to go reading the recipe, seeing if there's anything that is room temperature if you need to cook something. If your equipment needs to be prepared in a certain way, such as with whipped cream, you need to chill your bowl in your whisk. So understanding how all of that plays into building these recipes and creating the final product. That's where Maison Plus comes in. It's getting you ready and building that perfect foundation so that you'll be successful and all the things that you make in the kitchen 4. Introduction to Ganache: truffles. Deep, chocolatey, velvety cake filling or a nice, rich, beautiful, smooth glaze. What are these things have in common? They can all be based off of a ganache. Ganache is so simple to make. The biggest thing you want to remember is the ratios for dark chocolate ganache. It's a 1 to 1 ratio based on weight. Seven ounces of dark chocolate, seven ounces of heavy cream. You have ganache milk. Chocolate is 2 to 12 parts being the milk, chocolate and white chocolate is 3 to 13 parts being the white chocolate. They have more milk solids in them, which makes them softer chocolates, so adding less liquid is necessary to get them to set up to a proper consistency. Now Kanosh is used for a few different purposes. As I mentioned truffles, that delicious velvety filling coated in chocolate so amazing you could make those out of it. But I personally use it for cake fillings, frostings and glazes. Ganache doesn't have to just be made with heavy cream. You can actually add a lot of different things to it. For variation, you could add sour cream, beer, liquors, fruits. So many possibilities, and especially when you think of how many different types of chocolate there are out on the market. Good quality chocolate. There's big brands such as Valrhona or Cow Bow, and then you have more supermarket brands such as you tart, which is also a great option. They have different levels of Cacau 70% 65% different origins of the beans. It's really amazing how much you can play around with ganache and really get the perfect flavor profile that you're looking for. And if you want to use it for a glaze, you can add a little bit of sugar or butter or both, depending on what kind of chocolate you're using. I like Tab, but er to mine. Just a couple tablespoons to a batch of ganache will give you a nice, glossy finish. In this course, you're going to go through three different lessons, each one going over dark chocolate ganache, milk, chocolate ganache and white chocolate ganache. You learn how to incorporate peanut butter and beer into ganache properly, and then you also see how Teoh bring it to room temperature and whip it for a luxurious frosting toe ice a cake with. I love making ganache, and I always try to look for the right kind of chocolate. Good quality chocolate is pretty important. You can use baking chips to make ganache, so don't let this scare you off. Now I'm using baking chips. They have things added to them to make them more heat resistant for use in cookies. So keep that in mind that your ganache that you make with baking chips isn't going to be as smooth and really nice and workable as something made with a really high quality chocolate . You can still use it as a cake filling, so try out different types of chocolate at home and see what you prefer. Some people swear by tollhouse chocolate chips make the perfect ganache, while others want to use only single source. Fair trade. Organic chocolate. It's up to you, and you'll see how to use each different quality in the following lessons. And lastly, they have a fairly good shelf life. Bacon stored at room temperature for up to a week. I've never had a problem with them going bad, even with heavy cream. After that, you can store them in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, and you can even frees them up to three months. I've frozen ganache for long periods of time, and I've never had any problem. Just bring it to room temperature before you use it again. You don't need to re incorporate it or soften it or do anything crazy. Just bring it to room temperature on, then it's fine to use. 5. Dark Chocolate Ganache Method: dark chocolate ganache is so easy to make. It's just a 1 to 1 ratio. Heavy cream Teoh dark chocolate based on weight. So here I have to dark chocolate. 70%. Cacau bars, Like all these is a candy section, not in the baking aisle of the grocery store. Speaking ill usually has chocolate chips and other types of bars that are more for using in your baking. And they kind of tend tohave fillers and flavorings. But I like to just get high quality chocolate in the candy aisle. So these air 3.17 ounce bars, I have two of them, so that's roughly six and 1/4 ounce, which is what I'm gonna go with. You want to start out by breaking up your chocolate so you have a bowl needs to be a heatproof bowl you're gonna be putting your chocolate into, and you want to break it up into small pieces. And the reason we're doing this is because that way there's gonna be more surface area for the hot cream to come in contact with, and it's gonna help the chocolate melt butter and more consistently. Okay, okay. And then you just set that aside, and the next thing you want to do is measure out. You're heavy cream. Before we looked at how to zero out your skill. But you can also put whatever you're measuring an ingredient into on your scale before you turn on the scale. And then that just automatically zeros it. They have this set for Allen's is someone Look for six and 1/4. Okay, so hand cream is measured out. I'm gonna just turn the heavy cream onto medium heat, and we're gonna let this go on tone until there's bubbles forming around the edges. You don't want to bring it to a rolling boil and overheat the cream, but you want it to be hot enough that it's gonna melt all the chocolate. It's been a couple of minutes, and I'm starting to see this bubble forming on the surface, so I know my cream is getting really hot, and it's just rising up. It's bubbling on this side, but it's not troubling on the other side, so that could just be hot spots and my burner. But I want to make sure that all of the cream is heated thoroughly, so I'm just gonna wait for that side Teoh bubble a little bit. Okay, Now there's bubbles forming around the edge of the other side. So my cream is hot enough and I just want to immediately pour this hot cream right over top of my chocolate. And then when I like to dio, my burner is just let this sit for a couple of minutes, and what that's gonna do is allow the chocolate to come up to the temperature of the cream on its own. If you start sharing this, it will introduce air into the ganache, and I find that that cools it a lot faster. But if you just leave it alone, you have a much better chance of it, just becoming a nice incorporated ganache and not having to reheat it to get rid of any lumps. Later, they just let the sit, and then I'll stir it once the chocolate is nice and softened. It's been a couple of minutes, and I can see little bits of my chocolate floating up to the top in the cream, and it looks pretty liquidy when I I don't get a lot of resistance, and I don't feel a lot of still firm pieces of chocolate in there. So I'm going to start stirring this that there are still any pieces. Oven melted chocolate. They should melt now. If you didn't get your cream hot enough, it's not ruined. You'll just have Teoh. Put all of it back in the pot and heat it gently. Once you put that chocolate back in the pot, you don't want to put it on high heat because it'll scorch and then you risk for any your chocolate and having to scrap everything. But if you put it back in the pot on low heat, you can reheat it gently and just get all of the chocolate incorporated. I'm not feeling any hard pieces of chocolate, and this is so nice and smooth. At this point, you could use it as a glaze, and it would set up. You can also add two tablespoons of butter to this, and it will make it a little bit more shiny and glossy and give it a little bit more of a richness. Even salted butter would be really interesting, because salt is delicious with chocolate, so as it is right now, it would be perfect as a glaze. You can let it sit, and it's gonna firm up at room temperature. I don't refrigerate this at all, because it will just get really, really firm. And then he won't really be able to use it for anything. So let this sit at room temperature and it will go to a spread herbal consistency that is our dark chocolate ganache, Beautiful. 6. Milk Chocolate Ganache Method: in this lesson. We're gonna take a look at the milk chocolate ganache, and it's actually a milk chocolate beer ganache, which is what I'm gonna show you now. Milk chocolate. The ratio is 2 to 12 parts chocolate, one part liquid. So I have two huge seven out Hershey's Chocolate Barnes 14 ounces, and then I'm actually going to split my liquid half and half between heavy cream and beer. I am so excited about this lesson because you get to see the versatility of ganache. I think a lot of times you hear about ganache and you just automatically think, Oh, it's going to taste like chocolate. You can add flavors and you can really play around with ganache as long as you just keep those ratios in mine, you can just, you know, move liquids around and, you know, different types of chocolates, even flavored chocolates. So many possibilities. So I chose a beer that is going to go well, if this is a chocolate bock and I'm using the milk chocolate, I just really thought this has the cocoa flavor in it, and, you know, the milk chocolate is gonna have that vanilla, a milky flavor to it, so it's just gonna be a really nice combination. Now, you could use just a stout beer. You can use other flavors. Ah, caramel style. You could use an orange flavored beer. You know, something that goes really delicious with chocolate. So just play around with that. This is just what I found at the store, and it actually came. And like a holiday box with different flavors, Nash is the one I decided to use. So first things first break up your chocolate and this part is messy because milk chocolate has more milk solids in it, and it's going Teoh melt faster, so you're gonna have to wash your hands after this. You could also add in liquors, so, like a whiskey would be delicious or even rum with vanilla and all the spices so much come up with, you know, and and all those flavor combinations, Phil, off of something as simple as not even a recipe. Just a ratio, because that's what Kanosh is. The ratio. So I really hope you come up with new and interesting things, and and really, I've never met anybody who doesn't like some form of chocolate in one way or another or so ganache is usually pretty. He's tape set that aside. All right, so time to measure out started out with off, Turn it or in and it's already zeroed. So I'm doing 3.5 ounces of heavy cream, and if you over poor, that's okay. Just keep a measuring cup or something with a spout, which I have a little spout on my soft pants with one of those that's perfect. Liquids always really hard to measure. Perfect on the first poor. So don't get discouraged if you're doing a little bit of back and forth. No big deal. So now 3.5 and I want seven total number 14 outs of chocolate, seven ounces of liquid. So this is 3.55 That's okay. I don't have to sit and try to figure out, you know, 3.5, and at it, just to 7 to 7 is what I'm looking for. Okay, so this could go on the heat, and also you want to heat up the beer with the cream because you don't want to add cold beer too hot cream and chocolate and mess up the temperature and keep it from all, combining nicely. So get that going on medium medium high heat until it's bubbly and ready to go. Got my chocolate here so we'll just wait for that. Creamy cream and beer is getting nice and bubbly around the edges. If you use a large amount saucepan, it's just a thinner layer of cream, so it'll get hot spots and boil up in weird places. It purse. But this smaller saucepan and I can see it's really getting around the edge on the beauty of this is yeah, I use chocolate chocolate Bock. However, it's gonna taste like chocolate, but I'm gonna keep those really yeasty notes from the beer. You know, it's definitely for somebody who appreciates the flavor of beer, but it's absolutely delicious. I make liquor and beer. Ganache is all the time because I think that it's just a really fun surprise when people take a bite of the cake socially for dinner parties, anytime you're gonna have a lot of adults around. Also, if you are really worried about there being an alcohol content, you can let this simmer for a little bit longer. If that's something you're concerned with you're gonna be made, he miss. And if you're not too worried about it still having any alcohol content, then this would be the point that you would take it off the burner and pour it right over the top. That milk chocolate. Who's gonna make sure that all my milk chocolate is down in there covered with the cream and beer so that it has a chance to soften up and get all nice and melty? All right. And that's gonna sit for a couple minutes. All right, so I tasted the Chocolate Bock, and it's absolutely delicious. I'm so excited for this ganache. It looks nice and melty my chocolate super melty. All right, it's mostly combined, but I'm gonna go ahead and add in my butter, and I just slice that up so that it has an easier time melting and my butter is a little bit room temperature. So that's definitely gonna help, too. Put super cold butter straight out of the refrigerator in May not melt completely in there , and you might have to reheat the Kanosh. If you do reheat it. That's okay. Just remember gentle heat so it takes a little bit of time to incorporate all of the butter in there. Just want to make sure that it is all mixed in and you don't have any chunks left. And when you're done, you have this beautiful glossy milk chocolate beer Kanosh. 7. Peanut Butter Ganache Method: for why chocolate I mentioned before that it's going to have a soft or texture because of the composition of white chocolate itself. So you need Teoh. Basically, go for a 3 to 1 ratio, one part heavy cream to three parts white chocolate on your other ingredients, and I use white chocolate as my base for good. Nausea is that I want Teoh flavor but not have that chocolate flavor in it. For example, this peanut butter ganache that I'm gonna show you or ah, fruit ganache. The first thing we want to do for the peanut butter ganache is measure out our white chocolate rescue that I have passed for 10 ounces. So I've already set my bowl in here, and zero this. We know how to do this, this'd 11 ounce bag so it's really close. You'll just have a tiny little bit announced left of white chocolate in your bag. But that's OK because one ounce is for snacking. The other 10 ounces are for the recipe, so we could said this chocolate aside and get the other ingredients ready. Once you gather the rest of your muse on, plus, you can start with putting the cream in and get that going that way while it's heating, you're not just standing around. You can combine the other ingredients. Get all that cream in there. Put this on to medium heat that my white chocolate in this bowl. And I'm actually who says, going to add my peanut butter to this? Because if I add the peanut butter in last along with the butter, it's gonna be too much of a temperature contrast and the national want to firm up and not completely melt in there. So I want to put this peanut butter in so it has a good chance to get really soft and get all mixed in there. This would be delicious to with other nut butters. You could dio on almond butter ganache and use it in a almond cake or raspberry here, some delicious comedy have almond fruit. I'm going to add in the salt and the vanilla on the butter is going to go in last. So this is combined and I can just let it hang out while my cream is still heating up and I can already see that my cream is starting to change. Color on top goes really fast and actually the wider of a saucepan you use, the faster you cream is gonna heat up just because there's more surface area touching the cream. So if you're in a hurry, something to keep in mind, use a bigger pot. Just keep an eye on it, though. You don't wanna burn your cream. Okay, so my cream is nice and bubbly ready to go. Just pour this right down over. Let that sit for a couple minutes, and then it will be time to stir. This has had enough time to sit and warm up, so I'm gonna give this a Nistor unjust stirring up through there, you could see that white chocolate has really warmed up, and it's all melty and I don't really feel any hard pieces of chocolate left in there. I like to actually stir in small motions in the middle with ganache, and that's just specific to ganache. And the reason is because if you stir in large circles when you're doing this, all of your cream is gonna splash up out of the bowl. But you want to combine it so it takes a little bit longer than if you stirred in larger circles, but it will eventually come together, and you won't have to worry about making a huge mess. Okay, and then I want to add in my better. And I just cut that up into slices to help it melt. Better as if peanut butter ganache wouldn't be rich enough on its own. We just go ahead and add water to it, and you want to just keep stirring until it's all incorporated and again with this. If things aren't completely incorporated and smooth, you just put it back on gentle he it. And you can also put your ganache in a microwave safe bowl and just, you know, nuke it in 5 to 10 seconds increments, just to reheat it so that it can all combine. Most tedious part of ganache is just this stirring because you really want to stir it until there's no more lumps of anything in their chocolate butter Peanut butter just a really smooth product. This is beautiful, and you can see this is just a really nice, horrible consistency. So you could use this as a glaze at this point, or let it set up to room temperature and firm up and use it as a cake filling delicious peanut butter Kanosh. My gosh, I can't wait to eat this 8. Whipped Ganache Method: once the ganache has been sitting for a while. Typically, L A. To give it about 24 hours to completely come to room temperature and be as thick as it's going to be. This is the milk chocolate ganache, and you can see it's thickened up a lot. This is completely at room temperature on this. If you put a dam in the in between layers of the cake, you could easily use this as a filling is is no show you how to make whipped ganache. It's going to just be a fluff here in ash and more of a frosting that you can use to ice the outside of a cake so you just want to put this into the bowl of your stand mixer. I haven't fitted with my paddle attachment, and if there's some little bits of chocolate that get hard on the sides and set up, you don't have to scream those in cause they might just interfere with whipping up the nice , softer ganache. Go ahead and beat this until it's lighter in color and air has obviously been incorporated , usually between 5 to 8 minutes on medium high speed. So it's been about 5.5 6 minutes that this has been beating on medium high speed, and you can see it's a much lighter color on. It's definitely been a rated. It's so a little bit soft. But what I find is that if I put a crumb coat on my cake just really thin layer to lock in the crumbs, put that in the refrigerator. Don't keep the cake really cold. So then, as I'm putting on the second coat of this is a frosting. That cold temperature will help firm this up as an frosting the cake, and it will work just fine as a frosting. You can also use this as delicious cake filling as well. And once this has been the refrigerator and has really firmed up in a cake, it turns into a delicious truffle like filling. It has that soft but mill in your mouth texture that's absolutely delicious, and you can do this with any of the ganache methods that we went over in the previous lessons 9. Introduction to Italian Meringue Buttercream: Italian meringue buttercream doesn't need a huge introduction. It has basically all the same characteristics of the Swiss meringue buttercream. The only reason that you may want to use it instead of is because it has slightly more stability for a cake that's going to be sitting out on a display table for a longer period of time. You can use Italian meringue buttercream to give you a little bit more of a display time. Now I'm not saying Put it out in the hot sun and an outdoor wedding and let it go. No buttercream will hold up to that, but for a nice air conditioned room and a cake that might be sitting out for an hour, it'll hold up a little bit better than the Swiss meringue. It can still be flavored the same way it has the same shelf life on the same workability and storage characteristics seven days in the refrigerator, two months in the freezer. What makes Italian meringue a little bit more stable is building the egg structure before adding the hot liquid to it to set that egg structure. Swiss meringue is based off of everything being cooked and then whipped to cool down. Now that's still a firm, stable meringue, but Italian meringue. You'll see the egg whites are whipped with sugar to give it stability on its own. But then adding the hot syrup to it is just gonna set the protein in egg and make it really nice and firm. I'm finally the biggest thing that people ask me is, Can I use pasteurized egg whites? Now? I've seen new recipes where people are making meringue butter creams, and they're not even heating the eggs whatsoever because they're using carton egg whites that have already been pasteurized. The biggest thing that I find of adding heat to stabilize your meringue is it tends to make the buttercream lighter in color and in texture. So definitely something to keep in mind if you're during a little bit of research and you just want to know what the difference is between a cooked and non cooked meringue buttercream 10. Italian Meringue Buttercream Method: Italian meringue buttercream involves a little bit of cooking. But as long as you have your thermometer and keep a good eye on it, you should be able to make this recipe. No problem. The first thing that I do to get started with my Italian buttercream I have a small saucepan right here, and I have a copy of granulated sugar. I also have 1/4 cup of water and a tablespoon of corn syrup. And once you get these ingredients into the saucepan, you don't want Teoh stir it. And the reason is is Then you're gonna get sugar up on the sides of the pan, and then that will cause crystallization, which we don't want. So the goal is is to just get it in there and then leave it. But get it on low. He low he because you want Teoh melt the sugar but allowed to melt before it starts to caramelize. So I just popped my sugar mixture onto a burner with low heat and put my thermometer in there, and I'm gonna let that go. It's gonna take a few minutes on low he until it reaches about 150 F. When my thermometer reads 1 50 I'm going to start whipping up my meringue. And that's gonna be about enough time for the sugar mixture to reach the 230 degrees that we're going for, which is about the softball stage. The sugar syrup is heating up and it's reached 150 F. So I want to start whipping up the egg whites. I have an extra tablespoon of granulated sugar, and this is just gonna help stabilize these egg whites. This is six large. It quits. I'm gonna start on low just to break it up and then turn it up to medium speed to whip it into a meringue. You can see my sugar syrup is starting to bubble a little bit and the sugar starting to dissolve its A a little below 200 F. Right now I'm gonna keep my egg whites whipping into the meringue, and he should be ready to go at about the same time. When this reaches 238 Fahrenheit. My meringue should be nice and fluffy and ready to all incorporate. Okay, so my Marais has finally hit nice firm peaks. My sugar syrup is almost there as soon as it hits to 38. You wanna pull that sugar, sir, right off the heat and into the mixing bowl. Because it goes past it, it's going Teoh firm up and cook the egg whites, and then you'll have a lumpy buttercream. We don't want that. The sugar syrup is almost there. You can see that it gets nice and bubbly and clear, and it's forming big bubbles, and my bubbles have started to slow down a little bit. So it's right at that point that I need to pull it off the heat. As soon as the sugar syrup hits that point, take out your thermometer, lock this in place, turn it on to medium drizzle of the sugar syrup down the side of the bull at the side of the bowl between the whisk and the bulls, slowly getting it in there. Whatever is left in your saucepan. Don't try to straighten that out. Just pour whatever comes out into this and let it go, and you're gonna let this with on a medium speed until you can touch the bowl and it's cool to the touch. So I've been checking the around the sides of the bottom of my bowl, and it feels almost room temperature. It's so a little bit warm. But I just wanted Teoh give you a few little pieces of information at this point. Now you can see that this has made a really stable sign E meringue. So there Steph Peaks. This is really great and stabilized, and I can see and feel that this is completely smooth, which means that I cooked my sugar syrup to the proper temperature and added it at the proper time. If you feel your meringue at this point, or you can visibly see that it's lumpy, you have sugar crystals in their little bits of sugar that almost like candy. Then you'll want to start over because there's no way to get out at this point. You want this to be a really nice smooth Moran. Now, as I've been talking, my meringue has cooled down to room temperature. So at this point, I want to add in my butter. I'm going to put them at mixer back on to medium low speed, have softened butter here, three sticks. You wanna make sure that these are soft to the touch. These have been sitting out for a little while. They don't need. They shouldn't be melty in any way, shape or form. And here's why. You want this to be completely cool, because if you have really soft room temperature, butter and this meringue is it all warm, it's going to start to melt your butter and then it's going to deflate your meringue, and this is going to be a puddle e mess. We don't want that now. If you're butters a little bit too cold, and it's not completely incorporating into the meringue and it looks kind of lumpy and curdled, don't worry. Just keep whipping it. It may take a few more minutes to whip it, but then, as the whip warms up the butter and it softens, it will combine into the meringue so melted butter will ruin your buttercream. But too cold or too firm a butter won't just let it continue to whip under this on to medium low and add in a stick at a time. Once my butters and there I'm gonna stop the mixer and just get all this last little bit of meringue that stuck up on the side of the bowl. Get that knocked down into the buttercream. And I know, too, that I poured my sugar syrup correctly because I don't have any sticking to the side of the bowl. You really want to make sure that you get it between the bowl and the whisk so it doesn't spray it everywhere, and it also doesn't get stuck on the side and cool two months before it gets incorporated. Something like this go on medium speed until it's a nice, fluffy Italian meringue buttercream. Now I'm just going Teoh, let this wit on medium high speed for about a minute just to fully incorporated at a little bit extra Aaron and create the luxurious Italian buttercream there. It ISS you can add your flavoring. At this point, I'd like to add just toe. A touch of salt is definitely not a sweet as an American buttercream, so you don't need as much fault on whatever flavoring you're going to use. I just have some clear vanilla extract about you spend in half right in there with it back up there. This this is really stable so you can add liquors, melted chocolate, all kinds of flavorings to this and it won't knock it down or deflate it. But there you have it. Italian meringue buttercream. 11. Chocolate Buttercream Method: So if you want to add actual chocolate to any of your butter creams, the key is to completely melted. Here, I just melted it in a large mugged. This is about half of a 3.7 ounce chocolate bar dark chocolate, and I completely melted it in 12th increments. 10 seconds in the microwave. Stir it another 10 seconds until it was completely melted. You don't ever wanna overheat your chocolate because it'll get brittle and you won't be able to use it. So take it slow when you're melting chocolate. Now, I just want to let this sit on cool down. I don't want it to firm up, so I'm gonna make sure that my besides in my bowl or scrape down really well because I don't want that chocolate to harden. I want it all to be kind of sitting in the bottom altogether, but I'm gonna let that cool but not harden. The reason is because you don't want to obviously melt the butter in your butter cream, and also I typically go with about roughly four ounces to two cups of butter cream. No, adding chocolate is always a personal preference, so if you like more chocolate at more. We want less at less. But if you really want to be easy, I just had to go with 1.5 cups of butter cream to one chocolate bar. And I know that three cups of buttercream will safely frost an eight inch double layer cake . So to chocolate bars. Adam good to go. So I feel like this come to room temperature and then added into the buttercream so my traffic has cooled. It's a little bit thicker, but it's still liquid, and I can tell just by touching it. And it's not hot. It's not actually even warm. So this is perfect. It's just been about six or seven minutes. But this is also a really small amount of chocolate. Once you have your chocolate ready to go, depending on how much butter cream you're gonna have an end. You know, choose the appropriate size bowl for this. I'm just going to put some of my buttercream in there just because I have half a chocolate bar. I'm only putting about our cup of butter cream in, and then I'm just gonna fold it in. You could see that Italian meringue buttercream is really stable. This isn't deflating it or anything like that. It's still really nice and fluffy and silky. So just get the melted chocolate combined really well in there. And that's it. Chocolate, Italian meringue buttercream. So simple. 12. Introduction to Fudge Frosting : fudge frosting or sometimes referred to as boiled frosting. His velvety and delicious It's great for cake, such a sheet cakes or big slabs of chocolatey brownies. It's not a spread herbal or pipe herbal type of frosting. It's only horrible. And as soon as you make it, you want to let it cool a little bit and then pour it on whatever you're going to be using it on. If you're gonna be pouring it down over a cake or a slab of brownies, just set it on a wire great, such as a cooling rack over top of his sheet pan. That way, whatever pours off can drip down. Then you have a nice glaze, and it's not pooling at the bottom of your cake. Now, whatever you pour it on, you want to make sure that you put it in the refrigerator and it's good for about seven days. It'll have a nice, shiny gloss on it. In past seven days, it will start to not look so nice, but it sets up at room temperature and just gives you this slightly thick, fudgy glaze that gets has been glossy crust on the outside. It's absolutely rich and delicious, And it's definitely a throwback to growing up in a small town and going to potlucks or family re unions. And there's just a big slab of sheet cake with this budge frosting on it, so delicious. 13. Fudge Frosting Method: So five frosting is yet another cooked frosting. I have my Mieze on class ready to go. And I have a medium saucepan here on my burner. Gonna put two cups of granulated sugar right into the pot. And then I have three tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa. I definitely want on sweetened with all that sugar, 2/3 of a cup of whole milk. And I saw have Bonilla and a stick of butter. My butter. I also cubed ahead of time. I cut it in half lengthwise, flipped it 90 degrees, cut in half again and then cut it into quarter into queues. Turn the burner onto medium. Give this guy a little bit of a stir. I'm gonna bring this mixture to a boil. Looks like chocolate pudding on hosted before it thickens up. It basically is minus cornstarch or flour, but meses heats up and you keep stirring at the little clumps of cocoa will work their way out, so don't worry about that. Takes about seven or eight minutes for this mixture to come to a boil. But once it does, you want Teoh. Let it boil for about a minute and just be careful because it does bubble up and you don't want to get burned. Also, make sure you had a south spot that was large enough so it doesn't bubble up, out, over. If you feel more comfortable, put a lid on it. I'm just that way you don't have to worry about. Getting burned at all is a really thick mixture, though, so it doesn't spit too much. But also make sure you know how many pets are little kids wandering around when you're making this, So once it's been boiling for a minute, just pull it off the heat. Turn off your burner. That's starting toe. Slow down a little bit. I'm gonna add in my vanilla. Just be careful. It's gonna sputter. It's mixture is very hot, so up most caution butter is gonna go in. Stir this really well till that butter melts down. It's nice and smooth. It was a little clumps of cocoa that we're still hanging on his work their way out and incorporate it into this mixture, and that is the fudge frosting. It's very thin, but it's going to start Teoh thicken as it cools something like this out of the South Span and put it into something cool. This is just what my sugar was in. You could even for this into something that has a spout. So it's easier to pour over whatever cake you're gonna be putting it on. I just want mind to think enough a smidge before using it. I'm just gonna let it sit for a little bit to think it up to get to a good pouring consistency. Because at this point, if you try to port on anything, it's just all gonna run completely off. So I need to sit for a couple of minutes just picking up a little bit. So this has been sitting for about five minutes, and it's thickened up a little bit. It's still very thin and horrible, but you don't want to get too far past this point where it's not going to flow easily at really glaze something this will so give you about ah, 16th of an inch thick glaze on a cake. At this point, he wanted it to be a little bit thicker. You could let it sit for a couple more minutes and let it thicken just a little bit more. But if you get past the point of it just drizzling off of your spatula or your spoon that's no longer horrible. So for me, I will go ahead and use it at this point. After I made it, I let it sit for about five minutes and I can for this and use it as a glaze and it'll set really fast. It usually will stop dripping and set up within a minute to a minute and 1/2 and you have a really nice, delicious, chocolatey old fashioned glaze. 14. Introduction to Modeling Chocolate : modeling chocolate is so easy to make, it seems kind of odd to me to actually buy it already made. It only takes chocolate and corn syrup. That's it. You melt the chocolate, you add the corn syrup, and then you mix it in such a way that it comes together and forms modeling chocolate. It's so great if you want to use it to mold little figures or use it. Teoh sculpt really elaborate cakes, and you can even use it sometimes in the place of Fonda and because it has a better taste. It tastes like chocolate, as opposed to a sweet, thick dough. Now, in the end, it has kind of a Tootsie Roll texture, which I actually love to see rules or fruity Tootie's. If you've ever had those, it's also great to use because you concolor it. If you just use a white chocolate modeling chocolate, you can add any different color to it and make all kinds of different things. You can also make it out of milk, chocolate and dark chocolate. I'm gonna include a recipe to use white candy amounts, which are more of a compound chocolate and then also a recipe to use pure chocolate. If you decide to go that route, it's up to you. The method that I'm gonna show you in the next lesson is going to be using just Wilton. Bright white candy melts, so that way you can see that if you just want a super pure white modeling chocolate toe, add colors too thin. That's perfect and a great place to start than that way. You can use any type of chocolate and play around with it in the future, but at least it'll give you a good foundation now. It's also wonderful because it has such a long shelf life. If you wrap it up tightly and keep in an airtight container the last up to three months just at room temperature on your counter. And if you really want to keep it for a long period of time or you think you might not go through it that quickly, you can freeze it for up to two years. That's pretty incredible. Just wrap it really well, and then when you pull it out of the freezer, you're just going to want to fall it and then throw it in the microwave for 10 to 15 seconds to just soften and a little bit and get it back to work ability. Now, if you have it out on the counter and it gets really hard, which it will, that's fine. You just want Teoh. Throw it in the microwave for a few seconds until I get a little bit soft again and you can pull pieces off and start working with it. 15. Modeling Chocolate Method: modeling chocolate is so nice to have on hand just for really cool little sculpted pieces. I want to show you how to make a pure white modeling chocolate so that you can color it any color that you may need, depending on what you're gonna be using it for. I've already weighed out a pound of candy melts these air Wilton Bright white candy mounts . This is the lightest color you can get, which is perfect as a base for adding any other colors and playing around. Now, I also have ah third of a cup of light corn syrup. First things first. I just want to get these candy melts melted, so I'm gonna pop these in the microwave for about 15 seconds. Stir it and then just keep going in probably 12th increments until it's nice and melted. So 15 seconds in the microwave and they're just barely starting to melt. You could just see a little bit of mounted on the side. And even though it seems like you know that wasn't enough and they're barely melting, I always take them out and stir them because you don't ever want Teoh have a pocket hidden somewhere in chocolate of any kind, and then you just keep heating it. It will burn, and then you won't find out until you stir the chocolate. And then that burnt chocolate will seed into the rest of your chocolate, ruining it. So it's really important to just always, always stir in between heating so that you're keeping your chocolate a uniform temperature . So it gradually melted. The candy melts so that it's nice and smooth and melty. There's no lumps, and I did not overheat it this point. I want to actually warm up my corn syrup a little bit. So doesn't shock. The candy melts when I add it in. So I was gonna put this in the my grief for about 20 seconds. Parts. Mike, My corn syrup is nice and warm, and it's become liquidy, so I'm gonna add this right into my candy melts. Working fairly quickly, I want to combine this just until combined. I do not want Teoh overmix this whatsoever. It'll start to firm up now. If I overmix this, it'll become brittle and we don't want that. All right, so there we go. See, that was very little stirring, but it's combined. No plastic wrap is going to go right working quickly. Once I have in the plastic crap like that, flatten it out, and in this way it's going to cool faster and more evenly, just like uh, on. Well, let it sit until it's cooled down, but still pliable once the modeling chocolate has firmed up, but it's still pliable, still bended. This is when you want Teoh need it to get it into a smooth dough is going to take it Carol and need it as you would the other does, and this is just going to make it nice and smooth. I definitely don't want Teoh over Need it to where it gets oily. You just want to do it till it comes together. They haven't dusted my work surface or anything because I don't want to add anything to this modeling chocolate. Okay, so you can see now it's nice and smooth on the outside, so it didn't take long at all, and this is just what I'm looking for. And if there's any hard clumps in here, break them up with your fingers. Don't try to take them out, just break them off and then you can rerack this and just keep it until you're ready to use it on when you want to use it. If it's really hard, which it will get hard in a short period of time, just break off what you need. Soften it a little bit in the microwave for about 10 seconds, and it'll come right back to a nice, pliable dough. There you have it. 16. Thanks!: congratulations on finishing the course. I really hope you enjoyed it. And I also would love to see what you're working on and how you use recipes are playing out in your own kitchen. Take photos of the process as well as finished products. I would love to see posted projects on the platform, and you can also check out my other courses, which will help you to bake cakes from scratch and learn how to frost cakes so you can put them all together. And if you come up with big projects and you share them on social media, please tag me. You can find me at cake, engage on Facebook, twitter and instagram. I'd be happy to share your projects to social media. And if you have any questions on anything in the course or anything, really cake baking or cake decorating related, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm always checking the platform, and I'm happy to answer any questions and help you get to your cake decorating dreams. And if you enjoyed the course, please leave a review. It helps other students know that course is worth taking and also gives me great feedback. So I know if I need Teoh, make adjustments or add more things to the course. Thanks so much for joining me and learning all about chocolate frostings, and I'd really love to see you in another course.