Sunday, June 20, 2010

Chestnut Cream Cake


I was cleaning up my fridge and noticed that there was a strawberry shortcake base frozen in my freezer.  I thawed it in the fridge, it actually tasted very well still and the texture was even moister than before.  I also had some chestnut cream in the freezer which I thawed together with the cake.  Hmm... sounds like a mont blanc to me.  I started searching through the internet.  Then this No Recipes site came up with the tag Chestnut Cream Cake.  http://norecipes.com/2009/01/15/mont-blanc-chestnut-cream-cake/ I had most of the ingredients at home except the chestnut.  So I drove to the closest Chinese grocery store to get them.

None of the first few people understood what I was looking for because they all spoke Mandarin.  I do speak a little of that but I don't know how to say chestnut!  Finally someone pointed me to those ready to eat snack chestnut which were on sale.   I grabbed 4 packs and drove home right away.

I didn't follow the recipe 100% because I only needed half of the amount and I have some chestnut cream left at home.  Plus, I forgot to add the egg yolk.  Hey, it still worked!  I put 7.5 oz of chestnut in the blender, warmed up 1/2 cup of heavy cream to melt 1/8 cup of sugar.  Mixed everything together in the blender again and pressed the puree mixture through a double sieve.  That was labour intensive work!  Yet, the result came out very good.  After stacking up the layers of cake with cream in between, I squeezed the mixture with a piping bag and a special tip for chestnut paste which I bought from Hong Kong.  It was well worth the money and the puree strands came out perfectly.

This is chestnut from blender before adding cream and sugar.


This tip made the piping much easier.



I finished the cake in the evening when the sunlight just started to pass through our family room window.   Ho took these pictures under the sunlight.  Pretty neat!



I was going to just stack up the cake layers and top it with the puree.  Yet Ho thought that it needed some cream on the side.  I quickly put some on but I didn't have enough to cover it smoothly.


Then I remembered that  I had some dry chestnut puree left.  Voila!  Here's the completed cake!



6 comments:

  1. awesome!
    but you sure you didn't get butter when you melt sugar in warm cream and whip? it end up getting butter and whey every time.
    By the way, I tried the Helo chestnut last night. tasted pretty good! I found it too much on the stiff consistency. The cap even doubles up as a piping tip to get all those lovely strands! Pipe it out from the tube and Vola!

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  2. :-) I'm very happy with the result this time too. The taste is good, texture is good. The only problem is I can't leave it in the fridge for too long. The chestnut dried up very fast, which "forced" us to finish eating the cake as soon as possible. Not good for the waist! No, I didn't get butter from warming cream and sugar. I didn't whip much. Just stirred until the sugar had dissolved and removed the pot from heat right away. The Hero chestnut sounds great! May save me the time to blend it. Too stiff? just add more cream. Use the method here to mix with unwhipped cream. I don't like the texture from adding whipped cream, too fluffy.

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  3. I like the idea of ligthening up the chestnut with custard instead of cream. It should taste less creamy than cream but fuller in taste. However, having said that the cap is actually a piping tip for easy squeezing out of content directly on the finished product, I think emptying out the content to mix it with stuff defeats the purpose. (did I mention the puree is in a toothpaste container?

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  4. I thought you bought the canned one? I saw 900g Hero brand in a can for $18 at Mike Ang.

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  5. I bought the tube. Maybe I will write a review tonight.

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  6. hello! May I know where you get the mont blanc piping nozzle?

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