Chestnut and chocolate cake

SIMPLY DELICIOUS, and accessorily generous in minerals and vitamins…

This chestnut and chocolate serves 8 (366 calories per serving), and is ready in 60 minutes or so (+ an extra 60 minutes or so if fresh chestnuts are used).

Ingredients

• 200 g butter
• ¾ cup of unsweetened raw cacao powder (keep a bit to sift on the cake at the end)
• 1 ½ cups of cooked and peeled chestnuts (about 250 g) – if from fresh, see cooking instruction below
• 1 cup of milk (I used whole milk)
• 4 eggs, yolks and whites separated
• ¾ cup of Demerara sugar
• 1 pinch of salt

Preparation

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees Celsius.

Grease a round cake tin with some of the butter.

In a small saucepan over low-medium heat, melt the butter and stir in the cacao powder. Remove from the heat and set aside.

In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, add the chestnuts and milk, and bring to a boil.  Remove from the heat and, using a potato masher, mash the chestnuts into the milk until smooth. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar until well combined. Stir in the chocolate/butter mixture and the chestnut/milk mixture. Set aside.

In another mixing bowl, using an electric hand mixer, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt into firm peaks. Gently fold them into the chocolate/chestnut mixture.

Transfer the chocolate/chestnut mixture to the round cake tin. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes.

Remove from the oven, and let it cool. Sift some cacao powder on the top of the cake. Serve warm, or cold from the fridge.

Adapted from The Ordinary Cook

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How to cook fresh chestnuts with the boiling method?

Rinse the chestnuts. Make a cross with a sharp-pointed knife on the flat side. In a large saucepan, cook them in boiling water for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat. Using a slotted spoon, strain 2 chestnuts at a time out of the hot water – leave the other ones in it.

With the point of the knife, peel the outer skin and the inner skin. Without this first step of boiling the chestnuts, it is very difficult to remove the inner skin. Also, peeling the chestnuts is a very time-consuming operation – it took me over 1 hour to peel 800g, about 4 cups (!) and a lot of them ended up being broken – which was not an issue for what I was going to cook, but may have been one if whole chestnuts were needed, such as to prepare “marrons glacés”.

When all the chestnuts are peeled:

• either boil the chestnuts covered over medium-high heat for about 30 minutes, until they are cooked through and when it is possible to crush them. Add more water along the way if needed. Strain them.
• or proceed with the recipe using the peeled chestnuts and continue to cook them until fully cooked as part of the recipe.