EAT: Chocolate Chestnut Truffle Torte.

Recipe: Chocolate Chestnut Truffle Torte with Honeycomb

I cannot even tell you how proud I am of this recipe. It’s a triumph for science, I swear to god. This is the sort of super rich, moussey, truffley dessert that you see on restaurant menus, full of cream and chocolate and joy; when I saw a chestnut version in November’s Jamie magazine I got super excited, because I realised that by using the chestnut puree to make up the bulk of the filling and the chocolate to set it, I could get away with using a whipped coconut cream in the filling without losing firmness.

The recipe in Jamie magazine used a very rich chocolate pastry with like, four egg yolks; I’m not really about that, so I made a chocolate biscuit base as if for a cheesecake. You can make your own biscuits if you can’t buy vegan ones, or you can totally cheat and just add cocoa powder to digestives. Honestly, while I was vegan for a long time (post-Japan, I’m now about 70:30), I’m also a food snob, and I’ll only post a recipe here if it’s as good as or better than the non-vegan version. This is. 

Base:

175g (6oz) chocolate biscuits (cookies);
     or digestive biscuits/graham crackers + 1 tbsp cocoa powder + 1 tbsp sugar
75g (2.5oz) melted vegan margarine

Bash the biscuits into crumbs as if making a cheesecake base; the best way to do this is to put them in a freezer bag and whack them with a rolling pin. Super satisfying if you have a lot of pent up anger (I do). With the crumbs in a bowl, stir in the melted margarine to combine, then press firmly into a deep, lined 8" baking tin. Mine was 7 and a half, because it was the deepest tin I had. Refrigerate while you make the filling.

Filling:

300g (11oz) dark chocolate
300g (11oz) chestnut puree (I used Merchant Gourmet; be sure it’s unsweetened. If you can only buy sweetened chestnut puree, leave out the extra sugar)
100g (3.5oz) icing (powdered) sugar
300ml (1 1/4c.) coconut cream (you can buy this in tins in Tesco, or you can refrigerate full fat coconut milk until the cream separates from the milk, and use the thickest part)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Melt the dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl and allow to cool a little before whipping in the chestnut puree, and then the icing sugar. Make sure there are no lumps, because I would judge you really hard if you had lumps in your torte (Disclaimer: No I wouldn’t).

Using a mixer, whip the coconut cream with vanilla until it forms stiff peaks. My coconut cream has a lower fat content than regular double cream, so I couldn’t get it quite as stiff, but luckily the other ingredients are gonna cover your ass if you can only get soft peaks. Fold in the chocolate mixture, then pour over the biscuit base and smooth with a palette knife or the back of a spoon. Chill for around 3 hours.

This is like, twelve times as long as you need in order to make honeycomb! (Disclaimer: I can’t do maths). So make honeycomb. Do the thing. Sprinkle generously over the torte to eat. Fabulous.