Basic Recipe Butter Ganache & Sweet Little Beetles

Have all your ingredients weighed out and ready in bowls. The butter should be soft and, ideally, beaten briefly by hand once with the Whisk.

Add the Soft melting fondant to the beaten butter in the Bowl. Note: it's important to use Soft melting fondant and not ordinary Sugar paste.

Stir the Fondant into the butter until you have a smooth, homogeneous mixture. This is a little tricky and demanding at first, but after a while it turns into a smooth, homogeneous mixture.

Now add the tempered couverture to the butter-fondant mixture in three parts. You need to work fairly quickly here, otherwise the couverture will set too fast and the Ganache will become too firm.

Do really divide adding the couverture into three parts, because if you add too much at once the mixture can also set too quickly.

Once you have a homogeneous mixture, finally add the liquid (e.g. Syrup or alcohol) of your choice in two parts. Don't wait too long to add the liquid, otherwise the Ganache will become too firm.

Once the liquid has been stirred in, you should have a creamy but firm, pipeable homogeneous mixture.

Now use a Rubber scraper to fill your base mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 10 mm Round piping nozzle. Do not put the Ganache in the fridge. You can start piping right away.

Fill a cornet with tempered couverture and pipe elongated couverture drops onto a sheet of baking paper, spacing them 4–5 cm apart. If you want to be precise, mark out the spacing on a sheet of paper and place it under the baking paper as a template.

Tap the tin lightly on your work surface so the couverture spreads a little and does not become too thick. Let it cool for 10 minutes.

Pipe on the ganache as soon as the drops have hardened. To do this, hold the piping bag from above and pipe the ganache lengthways along the chocolate base, keeping 1 cm from the bottom. Stop pressing towards the end and pull back gently so no tip forms.

Now let the ganache set in the fridge for 30 minutes or in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Release the ladybirds from the baking paper and dip them upside down into the tempered couverture using a dipping fork.

Turn the ladybirds over, lift them out of the couverture with the dipping fork and gently wipe off the excess chocolate on the edge of the tempering device.

Carefully set the couverture-dipped ladybirds onto a Cake tin lined with baking paper. Only coat three to four ladybirds at a time.

Clean your dipping fork with kitchen paper after every second or third dip.

Now place the chocolate dragées or almonds onto the ladybirds as wings while the couverture has not yet fully set. Always bring the tapered sides together in the centre.

Finally, you can add dots to the ladybirds' wings and give them eyes and a nose.

For the eyes, fill tempered White couverture into a cornet and place small dots onto a sheet of baking paper. If you place the dots directly next to each other, you always get a pair of eyes. These are easier to stick onto the little animals than single eyes.
With tempered dark couverture you create the pupils and thus set the direction the eyes are looking. You can use this eye technique for all the little animals.
You can make the eyes either with tempered couverture or, more simply, with Cake icing, paint them on directly (a little more work) or, quite easily, use ready-made Candy eyes.