Friday 1 January 2010

Chestnut Chocolate Cream Biscuits

I don't often fuss around with individual cakes and biscuits that have several stages before they are complete; I'd much rather make a big cake or a traybake and portion it out as needed. However, today is the first day of the New Year and in the post-Christmas lull I had plenty of time to spare. I couldn't resist these neat little Chestnut Chocolate Cream Biscuits from Dan Lepard, which have the added advantage of using some of my Christmas leftovers.
I don't have a full size food processor, so I used my Braun mini-chopper and divided the chestnuts and sugar into two portions, then used an electric handmixer to beat in the butter.
I also used Tia Maria rather than brandy in the cream filling - it just happened to be the most suitable liqueur I had available.

I didn't have any problems with the recipe, and was really pleased with how well both the biscuits and filling turned out. They even look very similar to Dan's own photo on his site - always something of a surprise!
The biscuits have a very subtle flavour - I'm not sure I'd know it was chestnut - and the texture is soft and crumbly rather than crisp. The chocolate cream filling is really tasty and I'm sure I'll find a use for it with other biscuit recipes. My only tiny criticism is that, for me, there was too much filling for the number of biscuits made - I used the leftover filling to sandwich digestive biscuits together.
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10 comments:

  1. Choclette2 January 2010 at 14:23

    Hi Suelle

    Happy New Year

    These biscuits look truly scrummy - I love the chocolate and chestnut combination. I was just wondering how easy they were to eat? It looks like the cream filling might squirt out at the first bite. Or was the mixture stiffer than I imagine?

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  2. Suelle2 January 2010 at 14:53

    Hi Choclette, Happy New Year to you, too!

    The filling is ideal for biscuits - it's quite solid and doesn't squelch out when you bite into them. I'd say it's almost like chocolate truffles in texture - certainly stiffer than a buttercream.

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  3. Choclette3 January 2010 at 20:41

    Thanks Suelle, that's useful to know. I got all inspired by this post and ended up making some chocolate and chestnut cupcakes today

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  4. The Caked Crusader4 January 2010 at 08:35

    Gorgeous! I'm drooling! I have some chestnut to use - this could be the answer
    Happy new year

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  5. Kitchen Butterfly6 January 2010 at 19:49

    Love this, love this, love this. Love chestnuts....they look like macarons :-) well, sort off but I'm sure they taste yum!

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  6. Suelle6 January 2010 at 22:41

    Hi, Kitchen Butterfly. They might look a little like macarons, but the texture is that of a very light, crumbly shortbread.

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  7. Alicia Foodycat9 January 2010 at 17:46

    They do look like the picture! What a bonus. I wonder about maybe adding some chestnut to the filling, to make the flavour more obvious?

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  8. Suelle9 January 2010 at 19:46

    Foodycat - if you happened to have chestnut purée in the storecupboard, I'm sure that it, plus melted chocolate and some icing sugar, would make a great filling.

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  9. Anonymous9 January 2010 at 20:41

    Nice, very nice Suelle. I am such a novice but I bought my first ever pack of fresh chestnuts this Christmas. I'd never seen them on sale before now ... or probably just was not looking for them. Now I must try these biscuits.

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  10. Anonymous20 January 2010 at 15:10

    Yay! I made them ... 10 days later. But better late than never eh? Thanks for the recipe!

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