Recipe for the ultimate chocolate icing wanted!

[fadingfast]

I am looking for a recipe for chocolate icing (for a cake) that is not as icky and sweet as buttercream, but a bit more sophisticated than glace icing. I want it to be properly chocolatey but not too rich (so it is suitable for children).

Is a ganache the way to go? (have never tried it). I tried a recipe I found online which was meant to be fudge icing, involving melting butter with an equal quantity of icing sugar and stirring in some cocoa powder with some milk. It was really runny and not that great.

Any suggestions?

I find ganache difficult to work with as it goes on quite "wet" IYKWIM?

I have recently used the icing from the Hummingbird malt chocolate cupcakes to ice a chocolate victoria sandwich and it works really well. It's very similar to a ganache, but adds a little cream cheese, and horlicks, both of which thicken it up. I know adding horlicks sounds gross but it adds a lovely and very subtle maltesery flavour.

I was a bit more surprised by the cream cheese than the horlicks! Sounds good, will hunt for the recipe. Thanks

will post tomorrow when I've rummaged for the book.

This is one from Larousse

Melt 150g plain chocolate, and add 65g butter and mix well and allow to cool a little.

You can either pour it over the cake or whisk it using a balloon whisk and then you can spread it on with a palette knife. When whipped it's lighter in colour, sort of good darkish milk choc colour if that makes sense. It sets rather like a frosting. It's chocolatey, but not to chocolatey iyswim.

too!

try this one, melt 1 1/2 oz butter, stir in 1oz sieved coccoa, keeping pan warm (on and off the heat) add 4oz sieved icing sugar slowly with 2-3 tbsps milk, if mix gets too thick put back on heat. Put on cake while still warm.
It is a very old but very good Mary Berry recipe

Thank you - some good ones to try! I've done one before just with melted chocolate and butter, but never thought to try whisking it.

Betty Crockers do a ready made one , which is nice

here's the hummingbird one:
mix 35g caster sugar with 50g cream cheese
add 200g cooled melted dark choc

whisk 115g horlicks into 240ml double cream with an electric whisk until stiff. then add this to the choc mix
chill it for a bit (not too long) before using

that makes enough to sandwich and ice a 3 egg choc sponge.

Thanks CBS - sounds yum. Have always meant to get the Hummingbird book but never managed to!

I made a really nice cream cheese one the other day. I just used a small tub of philly, added icing sugar to taste (about half a cup for me) then stirred it into melted chocolate,100g should do it, one blob at a time. It tastes like cheesecake filling and isn't too sickly but really easy to work with.