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I'm making this bete noire for tomorrow: La Bete Noire I have yet to screw up this recipe. It's easy, and will satisfy most hedonists.
It is a little one-note though. I'd like to add some bourbon to the ganache, which is just 1 cup heavy whipping cream and 8 ounces bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped, in the original recipe.
How much bourbon would be safe to add, and do I need to alter the recipe in any other way? It would be bad if it failed to set.
The rule of thumb when spiking a ganache is to
So for one ounce of alcohol you either leave out one ounce of cream or add another two ounces of chocolate.
That said, yours is a slightly lighter ganache than the usual 1 part cream / 2 parts chocolate and a slight variation in texture probably won’t be much of an issue as long as it doesn’t flow down, so I wouldn’t worry too much. Aim for an adjustment roughly as given above and you should be fine - start with one shot, see how that turns out. Too much alcohol is probably overwhelming rather than interesting, but there’s no absolute scale for taste.
