The final recipe for this month (for me anyway) is Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake chosen by Katya of Second Dinner. I decided to take advantage of the leniency in the TWD posting rules for this month, and this week in particular, so that I could have this beautiful cake on my Thanksgiving menu.
I very nearly did not make this cake because I was not able to find the chestnuts or chestnut paste the recipe called for and it looked like a very time consuming recipe, but the picture in the book looked gorgeous and, as I’m sure you’re all well aware by now, I find it very difficult to pass up anything chocolate.
So, if I was going to make this cake I needed to find something to substitute for the chestnuts. I needed something that I would be able to readily find, would look attractive on top of the cake and complimented the other flavors in the cake.
As far as I was concerned, that meant pecans. I made a pecan paste using pecans, water, sugar and vanilla to substitute for the chestnut paste. I also modified the syrup in the recipe – in place of the alcohol I used water and butter pecan extract.
The cake turned out moist yet crumbly with a subtle nutty flavor and a hint of spice. Both “Prince Charming” and I enjoyed it, although I found that the glaze over powered the cake a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the flavor of the glaze – a very intense dark chocolate – but in any bite taken from the edge of the cake the glaze was very nearly the only flavor you picked up. I think the flavor of the caramel chocolate ganache complimented the cake better. Over all I count this one a success and hope to try it with the chestnuts next time.
A big thanks to Katya for this recipe selection – check out her blog for the recipe, you won’t regret the effort spent on this one!
Tags: cake, caramel, chocolate, pecan, TWD
November 27th, 2009 at 7:36 am
il est parfait, c’est vraiment superbe
November 27th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Merci beaucoup!