Wednesday 23 May 2012

Chestnut Pie with Chocolate and Rosemary

I'm loving all these herbs in desserts.  I made chocolate and rosemary crackers a while back, but that was still kind of sweet and savory -- this is a proper dessert.  It's very exciting for me.
The star of the show here is chestnut, you may decide yourself how much of the chocolate and rosemary flavors you want to bring in, you decide which notes to promote.  But you see how the three flavors work together.  Chocolate and chestnut are happily put together in many wonderful desserts.  Similarly, chestnut and rosemary are often found together in amazing roasts.  The three complement each other because they all have this earthy and woody note.  They combine in a just beautiful manner.  The rosemary flavor doesn't come in right away in your first bite, but it flourishes in the next second, deepening the flavors of the chestnut and chocolate.
The crust, most of the time I'm just too lazy to make my own shortcrust so here I made a crumbly chocolate oat crust. If you were to use shortcrust for this, may I suggest a chocolate shortcrust (I have a recipe here). It's very light and spongy because of the number of eggs in here. It's lovely.
Enjoooy :)  Oh and I'm done with exams!


Ingredients
Filling
250g chestnut puree
3 eggs, separated
a dash of lemon juice
50g butter, melted
1/2 sprig rosemary
Good quality dark chocolate

Chocolate Oat Crust
3 tbsp cocoa
1 1/2 cup oats
4 tbsp cold butter, cubed
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tbsp water

Method
Crust
Whizz all the dry ingredients together in a food processor, then add the butter and water and pulse a couple of times.  Grease a pie dish and press the oat crust into the middle and up the sides of it.  Bake at 200C for 15 minutes, take out and leave to cool.

Filling
Beat the egg yolks with the chestnut puree for a good 15 minutes or so until light.  You want to incorporate as much air into it as possible.  Then add the butter.  Beat the egg whites with a dash of lemon juice until stiff peaks form and gently fold it into the chestnut mixture.  Pour into the crust, sprinkle with some rosemary leaves and bake for 25-30 minutes at 180C. Leave the pie to cool then give a generous grating of dark chocolate plus some more rosemary

3 comments:

  1. Love this recipe.Looking fwd to try it..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Where is the sugar in this recipe? Or are you using sweetened chestnut puree? You have the word "sugar" in the first photo, but none in the ingredients list.

    ReplyDelete

 
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