Cake is topped with chestnuts and small gold pieces

I decided that I needed to learn how to cook chestnuts since finding good cooked ones can be difficult
not to mention expensive.

As with many cooking techniques, there is more than one way to achieve the same result. I will explain my process but please feel free to check out options as well such as this one.

Preparing the chestnuts

I used about 30 whole chestnuts. First I peeled the outer shell using a pantry knife to knick the skin lightly then peeled it off. Usually the skin comes off fairly easily.

Outside shell has been removed

Put 6 cups of water plus 15 grams of baking soda into a large pot and bring to a boil. Add the chestnuts and reduce the heat so that it is not boiling. Cook for 15 minutes. Strain the chestnuts from the water and dump the water. Add another 6 cups water plus 10 grams baking soda to the pot and bring to a boil. Add the chestnuts  and reduce heat and cook for 15 minutes. Repeat one more time. The water that the chestnuts is cooked in becomes very dark so be sure not to wear white.

After the last batch of heating the chestnuts, strain the water again. Use the rough side of a sponge to brush off the rough skin pieces from the chestnuts. Don't scratch too hard since knicks in the chestnut do not look as nice for presentation.

Last step is to lightly cook the chestnuts in 5 cups water, 100 grams sugar and about half cup of dark rum. Bring all of these ingredients to a boil and after you removed the rough skin pieces add the chestnuts to this. Again, reduce the heat to a very low temperature and cook for about 45 minutes. Chestnuts should be able to be kept up to 2 weeks in this liquid if kept in the refrigerator.

Chestnuts in hot water

Cake
This cake fits a long rectangle pan (23 cm long x 6 cm high x 4 cm deep)

80 grams butter (slightly softened)
175 grams chestnut paste
80 grams powdered sugar (sifted)
65 grams eggs
45 grams almond powder (sifted)
dash of vanilla essence
20 grams flour (sifted together with baking powder)
2 grams baking powder

1. First, prepare the baking pan by lightly buttering and dusting with flour.

2. Use a hand mixer, and mix the chestnut paste then add the butter in a couple of portions and mix together. Add the almond power and mix - then add the powdered sugar & mix. Mix just enough to incorporate the ingredients, do not over mix.

3. Add in the eggs in portions and mix. Add the vanilla. Lastly, add in the flour and baking powder.

Add pieces of chestnut then add  remaining dough

4. The easiest way to fill the baking pan is to put the dough in a pastry bag and squirt it in evenly in rows. Fill about 1/3 of the pan then add small pieces of chestnuts in a row in the dough then fill the rest of the pan with the remaining dough.

5. Bake at 160 degrees Celsius for 50 minutes. Check doness before removing from the oven.

Icing
100 grams powdered sugar (sifted)
15 grams water
10 grams dark rum

1. Mix powdered sugar and water & rum with a small whisk. Brush on the cake.

2. Place in a hot oven (about 190 degrees Celsius) for about 4 minutes just to lightly melt the icing.

Chocolate cake with pumpkin cream filling

Time for Halloween decoration.
This roll cake is filled with pumpkin cream and a few pumpkin seeds. I added cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg to the pumpkin puree so it has a tasty pumpkin pie taste to it.

This recipe is fairly quick to put together but if another person is available to help it will go even that much quicker.

This decoration will be piped on top of parchment paper and then the cake itself will be poured over the decoration before baking.  For decorations, either draw on your own or use cookie cutters to make shapes and trace.

Decorations are ready

Decoration:

Not your traditional tarte tatin recipe

Well, this may not look like a traditional tarte tatin, but it sure tastes good. I was making this for a group of 8 friends and I didn't want to be stingy with the servings so I used all of the apples that I purchased. Which I think was about 7 :)

One of the secrets to this recipe is making a deep dark caramel to cook the apples in. Making caramel can be daunting since the temperature of the sugar becomes very hot so it is quite dangerous if you get it on you.

I used a 20 cm round dish (5cm deep). Served 8 people.

Many layered tarte tatin

Dough:
150 grams sifted flour
75 grams cold butter
30 grams sugar
pinch of salt
1 egg

1. Mix the flour and butter together using a pastry cutter or with your fingers. Mix so that the mixture is like fine crumbs.
2. Add in the sugar and egg and continue to mix with the pastry cutter. Put on a pastry board and lightly knead so that it is well mixed.
3. Wrap in plastic and let rest for 30 minutes to 1 hour before using.

Preparing the Apples:
1. Please reduce the number of apples if you need to make less.  I used 7 apples for this recipe.
2. Peel the apples and remove the inner core. Cut in 8 pieces.
3. Make the caramel. Put 80 grams of sugar into a flat frying pan and heat until it turns dark & liquid. Remove from the heat and add 80 grams of butter to the caramel. Put back on a low heat while the butter melts.
4. Add pieces of apple until you fill the pan. Do not overlap the apples too much. Cook the apples on each side in the caramel until they become lightly softened.

Cooking the apples in the caramel

5. Remove apples  as they finish cooking and add new ones.
6. Continue cooking like this until all of the apples are cooked.
7. Pour the leftover caramel into the bottom of the baking ban. Let it cool and remove the butter if you want the dessert to be less rich.

Put the apples on a grill to remove the excess caramel

8. As the apples cooks, place them on a grill so the excess caramel drips into a pan.

9. Prepare the baking pan. As mentioned above, pour the remaining caramel into the bottom of the baking pan. Line the pan with layers of apple - fit the apples together so that the shape is nice.
10. After you finish one or two layers, use a spoon to push down the apples so that they space between them is removed. Keep doing this until the baking pan is filled.
11. Roll out the dough to fit just the top of the baking dish. Add to the top of the apples.
12. Bake at 180 degrees for about 20 - 30 minutes.

13. Take the baking pan out of the oven when finished and let cool for about 10 minutes.
14. Please the baking pan upside down on top of a grill so that the juice can flow out naturally. After about 10 minutes, remove the baking pan.
15. If all goes well, the baking pan will lift off without any apples sticking to it :)
16. Serve with vanilla ice cream if you like.