Awhile back my friend Whitney shared with me a link to a fancy restaurant in New Orleans that was serving up a triple creme cheese with dark chocolate ganache grilled cheese. This sounded like a great way to combine my two loves, so I flagged it in my inbox to try at a later date. Well, what better date than Valentine's Day?
After a cursory Google I confirmed that it is, in fact, possible to make ganache using mascarpone cheese instead of heavy cream. This was all the information I needed to plow ahead with little further thought!
Since I spent so little time conceptualizing the sandwich, the ingredients were very easy to assemble. I had some leftover white bread from last week so added to that some mascarpone and dark chocolate chips and was ready to go. I also kept some heavy cream on hand in case things went awry with the modified ganache.
Step one was putting 1/3 cup mascarpone into a saucepan on medium low (emphasis on low) to melt. This happened shockingly quickly. On a whim I decided to add 1/4 tsp of vanilla extract just to affirm that this mascarpone was destined to be sweet, not savory.
While that continued to melt together I measured out 1/2 cup of Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips. Shortly thereafter the cheese was all melted and starting to bubble a bit. This meant it was warm enough to combine with the chips.
I poured it over on top of the chips and started stirring the two together.
Until it formed a super creamy and delicious ganache!
That was about all the prep that was needed aside from spooning some of the ganache onto one of the slices of bread and creating a sandwich.
I lightly buttered each side of the bread and put the sandwich in the pan on low heat. I wanted to make sure to keep the temperature on the lower end so as to not make the ganache too hot and runny. After a few minutes both sides were lightly toasted and ready to go.
But what would a Valentine's sandwich be without a little heart? ;-) I also spooned a little decorative ganache on top to complete the effect.
Taste Review:
Some of you may recall that I've already ventured into chocolate grilled cheese territory, but last time it was with Nutella and goat cheese-- which was sweet, but had a sharp bite after taste. This time, there was still a strong chocolate flavor, but it was nothing but super sweet! The crisp crunch of the bread gave it a little different texture/flavor, but the chocolate was BY FAR the dominant element. Even though this sounds like a recipe for a cake, the crispy bread and light butter taste made it clear that this is its own unique entity-- a sort of cross between a sandwich and a cake.
One modification I would make, were I to make this again, would be to cut off the crusts. I remember GGC suggested doing this for the hazelnut goat cheese melt because it creates a sort of seal around the edge of the bread. This may be the case, but I would opt to do it more because the chocolate to crust ratio was off (not enough chocolate around the crusty part).
The key takeaway here is that this sandwich was RICH! I always contend that there is no chocolate item in existence that is too rich for me, so I could handle it, but I can see where someone with a lower chocolate tolerance might be in trouble. This is certainly not for the faint of tongue :-P
FINAL RESULTS:
| Sandwich: | Mascarpone Ganache Grilled Cheese |
| Gooey-ness: | 5 (runny inside, but not too messy) |
| Aroma: | 2 |
| Appearance: | Dark filling gives an interesting contrast to the white bread. |
| Taste: | B |
Again-- I liked it, but since it was so rich and may not appeal to the masses I'm not giving it as high of a grade as I could.
| Gooey Scale | Aroma Scale |
| 1 = still cold/hard | 1 = can’t smell a thing |
| 2 = slightly melted but still firm | 2 = tender waft |
| 3 = melted evenly | 3 = makes your stomach growl |
| 4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite) | 4 = strong scent |
| 5 = runny | 5 = overpoweringly pungent |
| 6 = sloppy mess! | |
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