What does autumn mean to you? Me as a
child says chestnut picking and walks in the woods with my family.
Me as an adult here and now says, leaves on the ground, jumper
dresses and dark lipsticks.
I seem to remember as a child having an
unlimited supply of these wonderful nuts. Or a shopping bag full at
least! Walks were an integral part of my childhood and I most
definitely romanticise chestnuts. They make me gleam with happiness
and nostalgia, but they aren't as they used to be. They appear to
fall off the trees too early and haven't had the opportunity to
become the huge tear drop esque nuggets that I remember fondly. Or were they ever that big? You
know how things seem huge in your tiny child hands? Creme Eggs
included!
I wanted to bake something that both
looks like autumn and has autumn in the ingredients (chestnut of
course!). I decided to bake something new to me, a torte. After
flicking through a few baking books and searching the internet, I
settled on Edd Kimber's Chocolate and Chestnut Torte. He describes
it as basically a cooked mousse. I have been attracted to tortes in
the past due to the lack of flour, but always picked something else
as the ones I had seen on television always dipped in the middle.
But then you see some fabulous tortes in Paris for example!
I decided to show what's inside on
the outside. So me and Joe took to our park, which luckily we
have just a few minutes away from our flat, to find leaves from
chestnut trees to showcase on top of the torte. We also
picked various leaves to set the scene and mood of this autumn
inspired blog.
This was a lovely after dinner dessert.
Not too heavy, very rich and satisfying, so second helpings were not on the cards
for me. It contains 70% cocoa Green and Blacks chocolate so I knew
when I had had enough (my waistline was thankful for that for once!).
The chestnut created depth to the torte in my opinion, similar to
how coffee is with chocolate cake for example. You cannot
necessarily taste it, but there is enough to create more depth and
intensity.
I bought a tin of chestnut purée from Waitrose, it
wasn't sweetened like the recipe called for though, which I was a
little apprehensive about. So I just added milk and icing sugar to
the purée (which was stiff in and out of the tin, so needed to be
loosened up) to hopefully make it sweeter. I did exactly the same to
make the soft peaked cream.
Both cream and torte were delicious.
