With the weather getting all cold...
and the first Christmas lights already on in some of the shops round here, that's it, I am starting to think A LOT about Christmas (I always kinda think about it a bit since I am part of the strange breed of people who buy presents all year round). I have lots and lots of nice memories about Christmas as a child, and when it comes to food, some ingredients always come back to my mind. one of them is chestnuts, and particularly sweet chestnut puree. Maybe because my mum's family comes from Ardeche: it's an institution down there!. Anyway, when we were kids, mum used to buy us the stuff in little tubes (like tomato paste but a bit smaller) and we'd suck straight from it until every single little drop was gone.....now that's comfort food! sadly I never found those in England but you can find the sweet chestnut puree in a tin in most supermarkets and delis now. And with that you can make a "gateau roulé" ("rolled cake"). You can use the basic cake recipe for loads and loads of stuff including Christmas log (I'll come to that later this week no doubt) btu here's the one for today:
You'll need:
(the repice is from my "100 desserts, 50 tips" book which I mentioned before in my "easiest bestest cake recipe ever")
for the sponge-
3 eggs
3 tablespoons of sugar
5 tablespoons of self raising flour (or 3 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of Maizena if you've got some)
1 teaspoon of baking powder
25 g of butter
for the filling and top-
2 tins of sweet chestnut puree
1 pint of double cream
1 tablespoon of chestnut liqueur (optional)
Prepare the sponge: separate whites and yolks. Beat the yolks and the sugar until you get a mousse consistency and the mix is pale cream colour. Add the flour (sifted), the Maizena, the baking powder. Whisk the egg whites into firm peaks, then gently fold them into the mix of yolks, sugar and flour.
place a layer of baking parchement/foil on a baking tray and butter it well.
Spread the sponge mix very thinly and evenly with a spatula
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in a hot oven (200-210 degres) until set and slightly coloured
As soon as you remove the sponge from the oven, flip it ona slightly damp clean kitchen towel, remove the baking parchment /foil
Roll the sponge with the towel together and leave to cool
in the meantime, whisk your doublecream into soft peaks, add 1/2 a tin of chestnut puree and the liqueur.
Unroll the sponge, fill with the mixture and roll again, this time using the towel to hold the roll in place
cut the ends with a sharp knife
Spread the reamaining of the sweet chestnut puree on top of the cake covering all the sides as well
Draw patterns length way with a folk and leave to set
you can even use on the end bits you have cut to make your "log" more realistic- place it on top of the sponge and cover with sweet chestnut puree to get a fake knot...how cheesy but we used to love this when we were kids!
