My French Robot Mixeur

Turinois – French Sweet Chestnut Truffle Cake

Whether you are the proud owner of a high-end kitchen that would even make Martha Stewart dream or whether you have a mini-kitchenette without an oven, this dessert is for you.

Over the years my grandmother Teresina has built a huge recipe collection and she’s happy to share some of her favorite ones with you. The first recipe even is an heirloom one, she got it from one of her best friends, it’s for “Turinois”, a French chocolate and sweet chestnut cake reminiscent of a large truffle.

Teresina was born in Rome, Italy, and together with her parents and siblings, spent many years in Paris, due to her father’s job which required frequent travelling.

Next month she’ll turn 90 and she’s still very interested in cooking and crafts.

In the picture below you see the original recipe she wrote down many, many years ago. She uses sweet chestnuts which she prepares and cooks all by herself. I used frozen chestnuts, which work very well, I’ve adapted my version of the recipe accordingly and translated it into English for you.

RECIPE:

Turinois – French Sweet Chestnut Truffle Cake

Serves: 4-6

Important: Needs time to set, if possible prepare 1 day in advance

Measures indicated in g/grams, if needed, convert the metric measures into your desired measures here. If you want to keep it simple just use sugar, butter and chocolate in a 1:4 ratio to the chestnuts.

400 g – 450 g frozen sweet chestnuts

100 g icing sugar / powdered sugar

100 g non-salted butter

100 g milk chocolate (I used about 80 grams  milk chocolate and 20 grams dark chocolate)

A pinch of vanilla (I used some seeds of a fresh vanilla bean/pod)

Preparation

• Put the chestnuts in a pan, cover with water and cook until they are very soft

• in the meantime, take the butter out of the fridge, cut into little cubes and put these into a bowl

• grate the chocolate with a coarse grater, add to the butter

• add the sugar

• add the vanilla

•  vigorously blend the butter cubes, chocolate, sugar and vanilla with a fork, really work the butter into the other ingredients  (if we did that twice daily we’d have perfectly toned arms forever…)

•  When the chestnuts are cooked through, drain them thoroughly and immediately purée them (use the famous robot mixeur if you like/a cutter/blender, or if you don’t have one, mash the chestnuts with a fork, but really well).

•  Add the still warm/hot (but not steaming) chestnut purée to the bowl and mix everything together with a fork. The chocolate, butter and sugar should melt and form a homogeneous, creamy purée.

•  Pour the not too hot purée into a cake tin lined with wrapping film, into a silicone mould, or into little pâtisserie mini-cake forms like I did and leave until the Turinois is cool enough to put in the fridge. The Turinois needs time to set and become firm, leave in the fridge at least overnight.

 Tip:

If you use 400g chestnuts, the Turinois will become firmer and easy to cut/slice, with 450 it’s delicious as well, just a bit softer, you could probably even put it in a  piping bag and give your cupcakes a Turinois-frosting with it (the cupcakes would have to be put in the fridge afterwards and served soon).

Tags: autumn, cake, chocolate, christmas, cupcake, dessert, easy, family recipe, French, frosting, grandmother, heirloom recipe, no cooking, sweet chestnut, sweets, truffle, winter