It's finally time for me to do this castle cake for real...I made chocolate ganache today on a whim because I had 20 minutes with nothing to do and got on here to look something else and realized i had everything I needed so why not? Now...I have my buttercream and my ganache and not sure of my new plans. Can I still leave the cake out tonight after icing if I use ganache for the filling like i was planning to when I was doing a bc filling? And, if so, when I do the filling, do i do a piped dam of bc with ganache in the middle or just the ganache? Or, is there a way to just add some of the ganache to the buttercream for the filling? And, finally, is there anything different then in terms of wait time, or can i just do my crumb coat immediately after filling it and stick to my original timeline from there?

Thanks, in advance. i don't know what I would do without this site. oh, wait, if it weren't for this site, i would not be attempting to make a princess castle cake for my daughter when I've only done a boxed cake and never even decorated it outside of icing it in the pan with canned icing!

Hi

My first cake was a princess castle cake too.

1. Yes, you can leave the ganache out overnight, it is very stable.
2. Whether you need a piped dam or not depends on a couple of things. First, the ratio of chocolate to cream used - the more cream to chocolate in your ganache the softer it will be and the more likely it will be to ooze out. Second, how much filling you intend to put in the cake. In Australia we tend to use less filling than I've seen on this site - I use a good smear of ganache (1/4 inch thick maybe) rather than 1 inch thick. Third, the colour of your finished cake - if it's pale, you may want to make extra sure the chocolate is well contained so it doesn't marr your finish.
3. Yes, you can blend your ganache and buttercream together. I make my ganache with dark, bittersweet chocolate and mix 1:1 with IMBC - the ganache makes the buttercream less sweet and the buttercream makes the ganache 'lighter' - I think they work well together.
4. Don't see why you couldn't do your crumb-coat right away, but to be sure, you could pop the cake in the fridge for about 10 minutes - the ganache will firm up very quickly.

All the best,
Cris.

Thanks, Cris! I think I'm going to try the to mix the ganache and bc and see how it tastes. And, by the way, WOO HOO I just torted my first cake!!!! used the cheapy leveler from Michaels, cuz I had to cut off the whole outside edge all the way around so it fit on my big cake and it worked! I was shaking so much! Now just 6 more to go!