Chocolate icing

[FriedaMensch]

I'm making a chocolate cake for book group at the weekend. It's one of the group's birthday as well, so I want it to be a bit more special than usual. I've been asked to do it because my cakes have been particularly enjoyed in the past - which is lovely, but adds to the pressure!

I'm confident of making a nice chocolate sponge, but I want to ice and decorate it, which I haven't really done successfully before - it always drips down the side in an unsightly fashion.

Does anyone have any tips for chocolate icing that will spread on smoothly, and then set nicely so not too sticky? I have got some little sugar decorations to scatter on top.

I don't like buttercream, so I don't want to do that, if I can help it.

ganache is nice...double cream and decent chocolate, you can use plain or milk

mascarpone icing is good too....200g pot, 100 ml double cream, couple of tbs of cocoa and same of icing sugar...it's lighter than cream cheese, you sometimes need more icing sugar to firm it up..depends how stiff you like it. ;)

or a cream cheese frosting 200gtub philly, 2 oz butter, 2 or 3 cups icing sugar, quarter to half a cup of cocoa ....three cups of icing sugar will make it piping stiff, use less if you want it spreadable.

oooh or you can use actual melted chocolate with the cream cheese frosting....but it needs to be cool and the philly needs to be room temp, or bad things happen with the mixing

It's a sort of frostingy-ganache combo.

Ganache is gorgeous - I make it with half and half milk and dark choc as I don't like it to be bitter. You can whip it once it's cool and it goes into a moussey chocolatey filling which is lovely.
To ice it on the top you can either use the cooled ganache which you can spread with a spatula or use it warm and runny and pour it over the cake - the idea being that it will set smooth (like on a sachertorte).

How about some raspberries and ganache filling and tbh I'd probably leave it like that.