This week is all about ginger! After figuring out that ganache made with 40% semisweet chocolate made the best filling for CBP, the first phase of my 100 days creative project, this week was all about flavour.
I have two criteria for the perfect flavouring: something that both enhances the chocolate goodness and foregrounds the Sri Lankan link of CBP. While cinnamon may be a popular choice which fulfils both these criteria, I am not a massive cinnamon fan myself (shock. horror. etc.). I am, however, decidedly a ginger girl – but only of the spice variety, thank you very much – and this week was all about ginger.
Going into recipe planning, I originally wanted to experiment with three types of ginger (as photographed above): fresh ginger, Gingernut biscuits, and crystallised ginger/candied ginger. However, I had to listen to my taste-tester (mostly because I don’t eat a lot, so it’s his job to finish it all up) who told me in no uncertain terms that crystallised ginger is dumb. Let me tell you at the outset that, therefore, the candied ginger only served as a snack during the creating process.
Gingering it up
With that out of the way, I decided to try involving ginger in the three elements of the basic CBP: the milk, the filling, and the biscuit. So my three recipe options for the week were:
- A: Ginger-infused milk for soaking the Gold Marie biscuits
- B: Ginger-infused cream to make the ganache
- C: Gingernut replacing Gold Marie as the biscuit
If you’re wondering how Bailey’s pairs with ginger, let me tell you right now it’s out of this world! A really nice combination. (Incidentally, my drink of the week has been Moscow mule. It’s really nice and a breeze to make at home!)
The tricky part of this week’s recipe testing was infusing milk/cream with ginger without burning the milk. In went peeled and chopped ginger in the pan, then milk, and I watched the milk with barely a blink to make sure there was enough time to infuse it with flavour while making sure it doesn’t boil. I am extremely thankful for the gas-top cooker we now have; doing this on the electric cooktop would have driven me insane.
I feel like such a pro now, as I managed to whip up three different types of CBP in the space of 15-20 minutes.
For A, I used the usual ganache with a tea spoon of Bailey’s. Soaked the Marie biscuits in the ginger-infused milk, and layered it with the ganache.
For B, a ginger infused cream was used to make the ganache, and the Marie biscuits were soaked as usual in warm milk and layered.
For C, the normal ganache was used but I soaked Gingernut in warm milk (for a second longer), and layered it.
After being chilled overnight, it was time to taste.
Overall, all three exceeded expectations. I had high hopes for C during conceptualisation as I thought the sweetness of Gingernuts would be a lovely addition to the CBP. However, in reality, we found the Gingernut flavour overwhelms the chocolate ganache. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not what we wanted.
During the making process I thought A would emerge the winner, as the ginger ganache with a generous splash of Bailey’s (mostly because I accidentally overfilled the tea spoon measure) would be the winner. In fact, J and I sat and ate the ginger-infused boozy ganache by the spoonful. After chilling, though, it was still good – but someone came from behind to emerge victorious.
I had very little hope for B, the one where I soaked the Marie biscuits in ginger infused milk. I thought it won’t have enough strength. Whoa was I wrong! There was a lovely depth brought in by the ginger-milk soaked Marie biscuit that elevated the whole experience! Goes to show why I should still follow the process, even when I *feel* like it will be a waste of time.
All in all, ginger-infused milk soaked Marie biscuits stole the show.
As I’m writing this, we have nearly finished that CBP although it’s been less than 12 hours since we did the taste test.
Notes to self (that I’m selflessly sharing with the internet):
- Figure out a crunchy element!
- Trust the process; especially when you don’t feel like trusting the process.
- Find someone with whom to share the candied ginger, because I can’t finish it by myself.
I’m undecided what to try next week. While decidedly more Indian than Sri Lankan, I’m toying with the idea of a chai-spiced CBP. Then there’s the obvious flavour profiles of chilli and sea salt to try. Maybe some fruit? Who knows.
It’s been a long week, and I’ve written so much (not for the blog) that I’m out of words. Soup is supposed to be a comfort food, right? Maybe I’ll have soup for dinner.
Minoli Wijetunga 
One thought on “Ginger-ly trying flavours”
Comments are closed.