Not strictly using up any otherwise-wasted food but an enjoyable autumn recipe nonetheless.
If it does meet the ‘save it Sarah’ criteria it is on the basis that I have a glut of chestnut honey (this is my second chocolate-chestnut cake recipe in less than a year – I’m still using the same jar!!).
I’m a sucker for a new ingredient, always the one scouring the deli at the airport at the end of a holiday, distracted by shelves of pickles at the butchers or browsing the speciality shelves of the supermarket. I’ve found some great new ingredients this way, I just wish they came in smaller trial sizes.
(My squeezy chestnut spread was another such purchase, when evidently chestnuts were front of mind. I turned to using this instead of sugar in my Chocolate Cookie Pear Pudding, having a MUCH less overt chestnut taste than the honey – although I’d hazard a guess this may have been down to the quality of the spread. Nothing sold as ‘squeezy’ has ever been top of the range as far as I’m aware.)
Serves 10
Equipment
- 22cm cake tin, preferably loose bottomed
- Blender
- An electric mixer if you have one – will help you get a light cake
Ingredients
| Eggs | 6 | |
| Chestnut Flour (optional) | 100 | grams |
| Spelt Flour (or your favourite flour) | 100 | grams |
| Oats | 100 | grams |
| Baking Powder | 3 | teaspoons |
| Chestnut Honey | 160 | grams |
| Butter | 300 | grams |
| Cocoa Powder | 20 | grams |
| Chocolate | 180 | grams |
| Olive Oil | 15 | grams |
| Chestnuts | 180 | grams |
| Tea or Chai (optional) | 3 | bags |
| Muscavado Sugar | 1 | tablespoon |
Method
- Break the chocolate into a heatproof bowl and melt over a pan of hot water, ensuring no water gets anywhere near the chocolate (even the tiniest drop makes it go grainy). Allow to cool slightly.
- Optionally, make a cup of your favourite strong tea (I used 2 chai bags and 1 Darjeeling in the same cup). Allow to cool to room temperature. I used this to soak the oats & provide some liquid to help blend these and the chestnuts to a smooth puree. If challenged I expect you’d be hard pushed to taste the tea in the final cake but it felt like a nice touch. Milk would probably do the trick too or orange juice if you like a citrus-chocolate flavour.
- Purée the chestnuts with the oats, honey and your strong tea. If it needs a little more liquid, you could add one of the eggs to this mixture.
- Whisk the eggs until super frothy – worth it for a super light cake. Set aside.
- Return to your cooled chocolate & stir in the extra virgin olive oil to prevent it from firming up. Add a pinch of salt too for a richer flavour. Set aside.
- Beat the butter until super light.
- Slowly add the puréed chestnut mixture while continuing to beat.
- Repeat with the whisked eggs, beating until smooth.
- Add the soft brown sugar and give a final beat.
- Sift the flours together with your baking powder and cocoa powder. Sifting them through a fine sieve onto a large baking sheet helps to get as much air in the flour as possible, worth the effort for light and fluffy cakes. I used a mixture of chestnut & spelt flour but use whatever you have to hand or prefer.
- If using self-raising or sponge flour in whole or in part, omit or reduce the baking powder. 1tsp baking powder to 100g flour gives roughly the right lift – in the case of this cake, the oats are doing the job of flour and so for the combined 300g of oats/chestnut/spelt flour I used 3tsp baking powder.
- Fold the flour mix into the cake one or two tablespoons at a time, mixing as lightly as possible.
- Add about a third of the cooled chocolate mixture into and very gently fold until only loosely combined. Repeat with the remaining two thirds.
- Grease & line your tin.
- Gently spoon the cake mixture into the tin and level the top, taking care to protect the light fluffy texture.
- Bake in a moderate oven (180c) for 40-50 minutes, turning the oven down 10c for the last 10-20 minutes if it looks like to might burn.
- Test with a sharp knife as usual, looking for a glistening clean knife.
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