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.

White chocolate macarons and a dark chocolate mousse filling (Macaron mess)

150g ground almonds (very fine)
225g icing sugar, sieved
100g white chocolate- probably about 80g once you've had a bit of it*
3 egg whites - keep the yolks for later
50g caster sugar
dash of salt

150g dark chocolate
20g salted butter
3 egg yolks
a whole egg separated

Mix the ground almonds and icing sugar until thoroughly combined.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites to soft peaks. Add the salt and gradually add the caster sugar whilst whisking on a slow pace.
Fold the almonds and icing sugar into the meringue mixture, and then fold in the melted white chocolate.
Pipe the macarons  onto a baking sheet evenly spaced. If there are peaks on top of them, dab them with a damp finger.
Leave the macarons to rest for 40 minutes, until a skin forms on the top of the macarons.
In a preheated oven of 150C, bake the macarons, and make the mousse filling during the meantime.

Melt the dark chocolate and butter in a bain marie.
Once fully melted, beat the egg yolks into the chocolate and butter.
Whisk the egg white into stiff peaks and completely fold into the rest of the mousse mixture.
Pipe the chocolate mousse onto the cooled macaron halves.

However, if like mine you decided to use all your macaron mixture in one batch... break up the macarons and combine into the mousse getting a macaron mess (instead of Eton Mess - see what I did there?). It tastes the same even if the presentation is questionable.

Variations:
use coffee or dark rum in the mousse
make caramel macarons instead of white chocolate
make a lavender praline filling

*it might just be worth getting 200g on the off chance you eat more than a nibble. Just a thought...