Sunday 1 December 2013

Chocolate and chestnut cake

This is quite a bitter cake, perfect for an after dinner treat. It has quite a moussey texture thanks to the folded egg whites

INGREDIENTS
400g whole cooked chestnuts
250g dark chocolate
150g unsalted butter
2 eggs, separated

100g dark chocolate
one orange - zest and juice
icing sugar, to taste
double cream, to taste



It's nearly Christmas already?!
CAKE
Pulse the chestnuts until you have a fine crumb.
Melt the chocolate over a ban marie, and add the butter.



Melted chocolate.
Once melted, leave the chocolate/butter mixture to cool.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar and add to the chocolate/butter liquid.
Whisk the egg whites.
Combine the chestnuts with your chocolate mixture, and beat in two tablespoons of the egg whites.
Gently fold the mixture into the rest of the egg whites.



The mixture.
Pour into two lined cake tins and leave to bake for half an hour.
The finished product should have a crumb when a skewer is inserted.


ICING
Melt the chocolate and add orange zest as well as the juice of an orange. I used clementines as I didn't have any oranges, but their flavour was not intense enough to cut through the orange.
Add icing sugar to taste. The cake is bitter, as is dark chocolate, so you need some sweetness!
Add double cream to thin the mixture, and dilute the intensity of the bitterness.

Spread onto the cake.

Serve a slice of cake with crème fraîche.

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