Easy Chocolate Ganache Recipe - When You're Out of Heavy Cream

I still remember the first time that I encountered Chocolate Ganache - I went to a wedding with a soon-to-be-ex boyfriend (always awkward going to a wedding with someone when you know your relationship with them is on the decline, hey?) in one of the south-eastern states - I really can't remember where it was, I didn't really know the couple.  Since my boyfriend was playing the cello at the ceremony and had to rehearse, I headed out for lunch & dessert with two very lovely ladies that I went to university with but didn't know well.  I have no idea what we ate for lunch, and I don't know what kind of cake we had, but I DO know that it had the most decadent topping I had ever tasted - chocolate 'ganache.'  None of us had ever heard of it before, and we made fun of the word quite a bit while we were waiting for the dessert to come - but once it came, there was no making fun anymore.  It was delightful.  It was mouth-watering. It was amazing.

They hardly resemble the desired result, but they are mighty tasty!

This week on MasterChef the pressure test was making 12 perfect Macarons.  It occurred to me, while I watched, that I had never tasted a macaron before, so I did a quick search on Pinterest and realized that it's just meringue cookies sandwiching a filing of some sort.  And they're GLUTEN FREE!  Who knew?!  So yesterday, when I had some extra egg whites sitting around, I tried to make some.  It's harder than it looks to get that perfect shape.  They didn't bake like they're supposed to, and they cracked after.  (Apparently you're not supposed to bake them on a humid day, or that happens.  Whoops.) Anyhow.  I had put some orange extract in them, and had my heart set on making a chocolate ganache to put inside.  Problem is, I forgot that you really need to have heavy cream to make proper ganache.  Milk - even Homo Milk - just doesn't have enough fat in it to make it thicken up - you'll just end up with really rich drinking chocolate.  Which is also tasty.  But not what I wanted to make.

I did some sleuthing on google, and after looking at several different pages, here's the recipe that I came up with:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup milk (skim & 1% will require more butter because they have a lower fat content)
• 3 Tbsp butter
• 8 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips 

Directions

• Melt butter in a double boiler on stove. (I actually just have a large steel bowl that fits perfectly inside a large pot with the rim sitting nicely on top, so that's what I use.) 
• Add milk to melted butter.
• When milk & butter are warm-hot, add chocolate chips & stir.
• Remove from boiler when chocolate has completely melted & is starting to thicken.  Set aside (or in fridge) to cool. Mixture will thicken & set as it cools, so use when it reaches desired thickness.

Ps.  I shall attempt the macarons again.  I will get the hang of it.  First step: buy a pastry bag so that I don't have to pipe them out of a plastic zip-lock lunch bag....  :S