Chocolate chestnut cupcakes

The greatest cake I have ever eaten was the maronischnitte (chestnut slice) from Cafe Sacher in Salzburg. It had everything one could hope for in a cake – it was light, creamy, indulgent, delicious, beautiful...and sitting in front of me, waiting to be eaten.  I was thinking of it only the other day and decided I needed to bake something with chestnut puree.

I teamed my ‘go to’ chocolate cupcake sponge with a tribute to the famous Mont Blanc dessert where the chestnut puree is piped in a mad wiggly way over the whipped cream.  The chocolate batter looks like a decadent ganache and it’s always a struggle not to eat too much of it on the way to the oven!

What a combination chocolate and chestnut is!  So rich and decadent – perfect for winter and perfect for Christmas.  The cream plays an important role too and lightens the texture and flavours. 

I did think about topping the cupcakes with a festive decoration but then asked myself the important question: what is a better topping for a chocolate cake than crumbled Flake?  The answer is, of course: nothing.  So I went with crumbled Flake.  To thine own self be true.

So here they are: my perfect Christmas cupcake.  Lovely to eat and a lot of fun to make.  Enjoy!

Ingredients

For the chocolate cupcake:
125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g self raising flour
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons milk
50g chocolate chips – I used milk chocolate

For the chestnut cream:
284ml carton whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g sweetened chestnut purée

To decorate: flake chocolate bars

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/375°F/Gas mark 5.

Line a cupcake pan with 12 paper cases.

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs, flour, cocoa and milk.

When the mixture is smooth and well combined stir in the chocolate chips.

Spoon the batter into the paper cases.

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cupcakes comes out clean. Mine took 15 minutes.

Remove from the tin as soon as possible and leave to cool on a wire rack – removing from the tin is important, as the heat of the tin will mean that the cupcakes continue to (over)cook.

Now make the chestnut cream:  beat the cream and vanilla extract until just stiff.

Spoon or pipe a generous dollop on the top of each cupcake. If you pipe use a round rather than star nozzle.

Beat the chestnut purée to loosen.

Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a 3mm plain nozzle and pipe wiggly lines over the cream and meringue.  Don’t be tempted to use a thinner nozzle as the puree may have little bits of chestnut in it that will block the nozzle...as I found out to my cost!

Sprinkle crumbled flake over the top.

Refrigerate until 20 minutes before serving.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.