This recipe is taken from The Gentle Art of Cookery. It does have raisins, currants and maraschino which I left out because I’m not a fan of them at all. This stores really well in the freezer. I only made half of the recipe in the book so the measures below will give you 4 ramekin sized portions.
You’ll need
- 10 chestnuts (or thereabouts) – I used a Merchant Gourmand packet because there weren’t any fresh available.
- 3/4 pint sugar syrup – this is basically equal measures of water and sugar
- Half a vanilla pod
- 1 egg yolk
- 25g caster sugar
- 250ml double cream
To make it
- Put the chestnuts in a small pan with the sugar syrup and simmer them gently with the vanilla until they have softened.
- Drain them and then pass them through a sieve.
- Put the egg yolk into another pan with the sugar and 150ml of the cream.
- Stir this gently over a low heat until it thickens. Do not let it boil.
- Take it off the heat and add the chestnut puree. Set this to one side to cool.
- When it is cool, put it in the freezer and partly freeze it.
- Meanwhile, whip the remainder of the double cream and then fold this into the frozen chestnut custard.
- Divide this into 4 ramekins and put them in the fridge til cold.
- Serve with a dollop of cream on top.
In the book, the recipe tells you to put the chestnut puree into the freezer so I think at step 7 above you could whizz this in an ice cream maker for a frozen dessert too.