The best chocolate drip recipe for decorating cakes

I am sure you will agree,  there is something quite irresistible about cakes that have chocolate dripping down their sides. They look simply delicious! Now maybe this is because I’m a bit of a chocolate fiend but all I want to do is to take a fork and dive in!  Chocolate drip cakes over the last year or so have become increasingly popular, so when I was asked to teach and organise a “Cake OFF” – a cake decorating version of a Bake Off – being sponsored by Lindt chocolate, I thought drip cakes would be an ideal subject.  On trend, delicious and fun to create. So my search started for the best chocolate drip recipe.

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A quick scoot around the internet revealed a number of different recipes, so I set about trying and testing the variations to see which would work for me. I tried standard ganache, but it looked very dull when dried. Recipes which combined butter with chocolate looked lovely at first but overnight went mottled. My drips need to remain glossy, attractive and most importantly incredible yummy. I started to experiment with adding glucose syrup to standard ganache and hey presto it did the trick.

The Best Chocolate Drip Recipe:

100g Dark chocolate

100ml Double cream

2 Tablespoons Glucose syrup

NOTE: multiply up this recipe as required

Method: Simply place the chocolate and cream into a bowl and melt in a microwave. Do this in short bursts and stir in between, you do not want to overheat and spoil the ganache. Once melted stir in the glucose until dissolved,  if necessary place the bowl back in a microwave for 10 seconds or so.

The cake covering

Often drippy cakes are firstly covered with either coloured buttercream or ganache and then chilled before the drips are added, this, however, wasn’t feasible in the time scale we had at the ‘Cake Off’. I had to take a different approach, which I think works a treat and that is to roll up the sides of the cake in sugarpaste before adding the chocolate drips.

Chocolate drip size

The size of the drips depends on the viscosity of the chocolate ganache and is a question of personal choice. The cooler the ganache the thicker the size of the drips, the warmer the ganache the thinner the drips. I suggest you experiment first and heat up or cool down the ganache to adjust the consistency.

Adding chocolate drips to your cake

Place some of the ganache on top of your covered cake. Then using a spoon encourage a small amount over the edge of the cake and allow it to run down the sides. If a drip doesn’t go far enough simply push a little more over the edge. Repeat adding drips of different lengths until all the sides are covered. Add more chocolate, if necessary, to completely cover the top.

Decorating the cake top

There are many ways to decorate chocolate drip cakes, people are using macaroons, sweets, sugar flowers, wafer paper flowers and sometimes simply fresh fruit as in my example below.

For the Wentworth Cake Off, all the girls were given chocolate Lindt truffles, modelling paste and silicone moulds to design and create their own decorations. They all had a fabulous time and so did I!

Below is a video I created on Facebook live – I talk about making the best chocolate drip recipe and demonstrate adding the drips.

I hope I’ve inspired you to make your own gorgeous chocolatey creations and maybe, to be more adventurous…If you feel you need a bit more tuition, I teach both 1-2-1 classes and group classes so please enquire.

Sweet wishes

Lindy

‘Bringing world-class sugarcraft into your kitchen’