What is Ganache?

Ganache works because of emulsification. When you heat cream, the fat molecules break apart. When you pour that hot cream over chocolate, the cocoa butter in the chocolate melts and the fat from the cream binds everything together into a stable emulsion. The ratio of cream to chocolate determines the texture: more cream makes it pourable (for drips and glazes), less cream makes it spreadable (for frosting). A 6-inch chocolate cake with a crumb coat and ganache drip uses roughly 200g of ganache at a food cost of $2.14 — that's 35.7% of your ingredient cost for a $12 retail price, leaving you $9.86 to cover labor, overhead, and profit. Compare that to Italian meringue buttercream, which costs $1.89 for the same application but takes 12 minutes to make by hand. Ganache takes 3 minutes and tastes better. The math changes depending on what chocolate you use. A dark chocolate ganache (70% cacao) costs more per gram than milk chocolate, but you use less of it because the flavor is stronger. A 9-inch wedding cake tier with a thin ganache drip (150g) made from 70% dark chocolate ($0.0142/g) costs $2.13 in chocolate alone. The same tier with milk chocolate ganache (200g at $0.0089/g) costs $1.78. That $0.35 difference doesn't sound like much, but across 40 wedding cakes a year, you're choosing between $14 in profit or $0. You need to know which chocolate you're using before you quote the job. Ganache also solves a logistics problem. You can make it the day before, refrigerate it in an airtight container, and reheat it gently the morning of the delivery. Buttercream breaks if you overheat it. Fondant requires humidity control. Ganache is forgiving. A batch made on Thursday morning is still glossy and pourable on Friday afternoon. This means you can batch-make ganache for 6-8 cakes at once, reducing your prep time by 40 minutes compared to making buttercream for each cake individually. That's real time savings on a Saturday when you're racing to finish 4 deliveries before noon.