“This recipe is adapted from something my grandmother made for my 28th birthday. She lives in the French Pyrenees and had collected fallen chestnuts that morning while walking the dog in the forest. It was of a magic, mousse-like texture that disappeared from your mouth as you ate it, leaving behind only the delicate flavour of chestnuts, forest floor and rum.
Granny didn’t use a recipe for this cake, she just knew what to do. I suppose that’s what 70 years of cooking experience does for you. With a little persuasion, she wrote down what she had made and added it to her tatty old recipe file. She doesn’t use cookbooks, but she will often consult this file, which is splattered with sauce and filled with cut-outs from magazines, rough methods and ideas scribbled down over decades.
I adapted her chestnut cake recipe by adding chocolate, because I love chocolate. If it is not chestnut season you can use cooked vacuum-packed or canned chestnuts, which are readily available in supermarkets and much easier to work with. For this recipe you’ll need a springform cake tin, lined on the bottom with greaseproof paper.”
Chef Merlin Labron-Johnson
Feeds 8-10
Ingredients
250g, chestnuts, cooked and peeled
250ml milk
250g unsalted butter, diced
250g dark chocolate, chopped
4 eggs, separated
140g caster sugar
300g thick crème fraîche
50ml dark rum
chocolate for shaving
Method
Preheat oven to 160°C/140°C fan/gas 3.
Put the chestnuts in a saucepan with the milk and bring to a simmer. Cook gently for 10 minutes and place in a blender. Blend until smooth, adding a little extra milk if necessary, and set aside.
Put the butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl and place over simmering water, stirring from time to time until it is melted.
In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the caster sugar and then incorporate the chestnut purée, followed by the chocolate/butter mixture. Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks and, using a spatula, gently fold it into the chocolate and chestnut batter. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and place it in the oven for 30 minutes. To check if it’s cooked enough, insert a skewer or the tip of a small knife. If it comes out clean, it is ready, if not, return to the oven for a few minutes more. Leave to cool for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Mix the crème fraîche with the rum and spread over the top of the cake. Decorate with chocolate shavings. This cake is best eaten on the day it is made, which, if past experience is anything to go by, shouldn’t be a problem.