After some futile
effort to make my own chestnut cream, I decided not to reinvent the wheel and
settled for some French puree de marrons. Afterall, the tiny cake is so much
work in itself without its chestnut cream. I did not have the mont blanc piping
tip and made do with a cut tip of a piping bag. It doesn’t look too bad with
the icing sugar so the fancy tip is no longer on my to-buy list.
This cake is more
Japanese than French. The later uses a pate sucre which hopefully will be my
next experiment.
Makes 10 little cakes
Ingredients :
Hardware :
Baking pan, lined
10 foil cup holders
Cookie cutter
Sponge base :
Combine
these A : 25 g caster sugar + 60g cake flour + 1/4 t baking powder
Combine
these B :1 T cream of coconut + 3 egg yolks + 1g salt
+ 50g corn oil + 20g milk
Meringue
:
Whisk
to soft peaks :
3
egg whites + 40g sugar + 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
Glace :
2 Tbsp caster sugar + 2
Tbsp hot water + 2 Tbsp rum
Topping :
10 Ready to eat candied
chestnut
40g plain whipped cream
200g French chestnut
paste mixed with 40g whipped cream until smooth
Method :
( Sponge cake )
To make the cake, whisk
A and B until pale and light. Reserve.
Prepare meringue. Whisk
until soft peaks.
Fold the meringue into
the yolk base, in 3 batches.
Transfer the batter to
prepared tray.
Bake in a preheated
oven at 180C for 18 mins.
Leave to cool.
( Shaping / Assembly )
Cut out 10 sponge cake rounds.
Transfer to 10 cupcake
holders.
Lightly glace the
sponge cakes.
( Decoration )
Arrange candied
chestnut on each sponge cake.
Pipe a mound of
whipped cream.
Pipe chestnut cream
around the cake all the way to the top of the cake.
Chill.
To serve, dust with
icing sugar.
Mostly
adapted from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJWmn9KXzQs
