Chestnut Desserts

I made chestnut macarons and a dome cake for a chestnut-themed Turkish blog event. For the macarons, I used a la Cuisine's basic macaron recipe with 1.5 tbs chestnut puree added in the batter during the final mixing. I did not have any buttercream on hand and I did not feel like making a new batch, so I just whipped heavy cream with more chestnut puree for the filling. I love the taste of whipped cream more than I like buttercream, but in retrospect, this was not a good idea as the macarons drew moisture from the cream as they stood and ended up losing their wonderful crunch. Otherwise, they looked and tasted very good.

The dome was inspired by the Hedgehog Cake in Francois Payard's Simply Sensational Desserts, but since I changed quite a few things along the way, it ended up looking different from the picture in the book. The components are chocolate sponge, chestnut ganache, whipped cream filling and candied chestnuts. The chestnut ganache was so good that it was worth making this dessert just for that. (Make your favorite chocolate ganache and mix in chestnut puree. You get to decide which one dominates in flavor.

For the sake of gathering tasty chestnut desserts in a post, I'd like to give a link here to my previously posted Chestnut and White Chocolate Ricotta Cheesecake. That one is a classic to me.

I wish you all happy holidays, and don't forget to enjoy your chestnuts while they are still around.