Chocolate icing to use as 'glue'

[SarkyWench]

I'm planning a rather ambitious birthday cake for ds1 in the shape of a house.

What I need is a very chocolately icing to cover the walls and roof that I can use as glue to hold in place various bits of chocolate and sweets that I'll be using as windows, doors, roof tiles etc.

I've done something similar in the past using ganache, but is there a better option? Ganache tastes great but it's runniness can make it trickier than I'd like.

Thanks.

icing sugar, cocoa powder and enough warm water to get it to your desired consistency?

Doesn't that taste awful?

Chocolate butter icing, works really well as long as you wait until its cool after adding the melted chocolate ( or could use cocoa powder)

And tastes fabulous!

If you mix butter cream with a decent amount of melted choc. it sets and will hold sweets in place.

not really

MIL uses it when decorating the gingerbread house at xmas. depends on the cocoa you use i suppose and how much you are planning to layer on!

So talk me through butter icing...

How much actual chocolate can I get away with putting in? What sort of proportions do I need?

2 oz marge
2 tbsp cocoa
2 tbsp milk
8 oz icing sugar

heat your marge and milk, when marge is melted add cocoa and cook out for a couple of minutes
take it off the heat and add icing sugar
beat with a wooden spoon -it will look like it's splitting but keep at it and it will come together

let is cool until it's only just warm and then you can use as glue -as it cools it goes firm without being hard so works very well

Ganache shouldn't be runny when cool.

I make ganache using 600ml double cream and 1kg dark or milk chocolate. Very firn when cooled/refrigerated. If you make it the night before and leave overnight you will need to warm it (in microwave) very slightly to get a consistency where it's spreadable again. Just don't warm too much, warm a bit them stir, then warm a bit more if needed.

Ganache is so much nicer than chocolate buttercream IMO.

Can't you use actual chocolate as the glue?? And then ganache to decorate?

It's only really royal icing that sets hard! ANd lots of those gingerbread houses are held together with caramel

I'd love to use ganache. Definitely the yummiest option.

So I always pour/spread it on when warm. And then when it has cooled a bit, stick in any decorations that need holding in place. Is that wrong? It works ok, but is a bit time critical so if I have lots of decorating to do I worry that it will harden too much before I'm done. Maybe my mistake is to put on all the ganache at once rather than doing in sections so I can rewarm it if necessary. Or maybe I'm wrong in assuming that it need to still be slightly warm to act as glue?

Thanks so much all of you for your advice.
I'm experimenting with buttercream today. Good excuse for cupcakes :)

And I hadn't though of using just chocolate.

So I'd just melt it, let it cool a bit, and the spread on.

Would make the cake hard to cut I guess, unless I didn't use very much...

Ganache doesn't need to be warm to use at all, unless you are pouring it, but I wouldn't pour it unless I wanted a really smooth, shiny cake. You don't want it fully cooled down/refridgerated either, as it will be too stiff to work with and things won't stick to it by then.

You want it to be very thick but spreadable, so you can apply it to the cake with a hot palate knife (heated in a jug of hot water and you can dip it into the hot water in between 'spreads' or to smooth the cake more if you want to). You should be able to pick up a big dollop of it on the palate knife if it's the right consistency.

You won't need to rewarm it during use at all.

Thank you.

And do you put the ganache straight on to the cake? I've heard of people butting buttercream on first but could see the point of this...

No, use ganache instead of buttercream, so just straight on the cake.

Thanks.

Hi.
Just come back to say thanks for the advice.
I ended up using butter icing in the end because I did a trial batch with some cupcakes and DS1 insisted that it was yummier and he wanted it for his cake.

Anyway it worked really well. I didn't actually end up doing much 'glueing' but it did hold the windows etc in place.

I've put a pic on my profile for anyone who is interested :)