Christmas cake - but not as we know it.

[shewhomust]

It starts with the chestnut and chocolate cake I made for the wine tasting lunch; the recipe is torta di castagne from Claudia Roden's Food of Italy, adapted because the recipe instructs you to start by preparing your chestnuts, and I had a couple of tins of crème de marrons, French sweetened chestnut puree, and I melted the chocolate instead of grating it, because it was easier. So the revised recipe goes:

One and a half tins crème de marrons
4 oz ground almonds
5 eggs
4 oz butter
zest of one lemon
generous 4 oz dark chocolate
chestnut liqueur
chestnut flour to dust tin (it doesn't have to be chestnut flour, but I had some, and it has the virtue of being gluten free)

Melt chocolate, stir in - in order - butter, chestnuts, lemon zest, egg yolks, almonds, liqueur. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Pour into buttered and floured cake tin. (10" cake tin, it says here. Next time I will line a tin with a removable base, so that I can get the cake out of the tin). Bake at mark 4 (350°) for 50 - 60 minutes.

The resultant cake is surprisingly light and delicate - which I had not expected, hence the miscalculatio about the tin. There were no leftovers - except the other half of a tin of crème de marrons. I also had the remains of a packet of chestnut biscuits gradually going soggy in a tin. With the aid of Google, I found a recipe for chocolate chestnut cake and a recipe for chocolate tiffin cake mix. There was a substantial overlap of ingredients and method, so I combined them

The remaining half tin crème de marrons
4 oz dark chocolate
2 oz butter
3 oz biscuits
chopped mixed peel (about 2 oz? as much as was left in the tub I'd bought last year because it was an emergency and I couldn't find any whole candied peel)
chestnut liqueur

Melt chocolate, mix in butter. Add about two thirds of this mixture to the crème de marrons; then add the broken biscuits, peel and liqueur to the other third.

Butter and line a shallow dish, and spread in the two mixtures in separate layers - you could try multiple layers if you were ambitious, but I'm not. I put the chestnut mix on top, and that worked fine. Let it set, and serve as thinly sliced as you can manage.

I'd thought of soaking the biscuits in the liquer, but I'm glad I didn't, because if anything it could do with more crunch. Another time I might put some walnuts in the biscuit layer.

And something completely different: at a birthday party last night we were served Trinidadian Christmas cake, which tasted (completely wonderful and) like a bar of compressed dried fruit, only moister and more alcoholic. A search turns up a variety of recipes for Trinidad Black Christmas Cake, of which this one looks particularly promising. But they all look more like the familiar Christmas cake than I expected...

Comments

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Am currently trying to learn to cook (...quiet, please, on those cheap places...) and shall try these out next year... or to be more exact: sometime well before next christmas. That way, I have time enough on my hands to practise. & See whom I can impress with my knowledge! Thanks for these.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Always glad to be of service!