Chestnut Cheesecake

[sazji]

Chestnut Cheesecake

Serves 8 as Dessert.

This is a bit of a hybrid between an Austrian “cake” made with a filling of pure chestnuts, eggs, vanilla and sugar, and an adaptation of the Nutmeg Cheesecake in the book, “Butter, Sugar, Flour, Eggs” by Gale Gand and Rick Tramonto. I liked the nutmeg and left it in, but cut down the amount for this recipe.

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Filling

• 600 g cream cheese (3 8 oz pkgs)
  
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg or less, depending on how much you like nutmeg.
  
• 1-3/4 c sugar
  
• 1/8 tsp salt
  
• 1-1/2 c chestnut puree (made from app 2 1/4 cups chestnuts)
  
• 4 eggs
  

Crust

• 200 g chocolate cookies (8 oz)
  
• 2 T cocoa (optional)
  
• 1/3 c sugar
  
• 1/3 c butter, melted
  

Make the chestnut pureee

Cut a strip off one side of the chestnut peel and boil them for 15 minutes, ladle out into a low pan and add cooking water to cover. This keeps them warm; they are much easier to deal with if they stay hot. Remove outer and inner peel. Chop finely, put into a small saucepan and add water to the same level, and simmer, stirring constantly (don’t burn them!). They will break down rather quickly and resemble mashed potatoes. You want a consistency similar to that. When it is mostly broken down, press through a sieve.

You could probably do this very quickly in a food processor.

Heat the oven to 175C (350F) with rack on lowest level.

Prepare the crust:

(Substitute your own favorite chocolate cookie crust if you like; this is my own adaptation in a land devoid of Nabisco Chocolate Wafers.)

Crush cookies, mix with other ingredients with fingers till a bit squeezed together will hold its shape. Press a little more than 1/3 of the mixture into the bottom of a 9” springform pan. Take small amounts and press around the edges to make a side crust about 4 cm high, trying to make an even edge. Don’t worry about trying to get it all the way to the edge of the pan, because whatever is above the line of the filling will crumble off anyway.

Prepare the filling:

Put cream cheese into a large bowl, beat just at medium speed until smooth with electric mixer. (If you beat it full of air, the cake will crack when it cools.) Add vanilla, nutmeg and salt. On low speed, mix in the chestnut puree. Add eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition to ensure even mixing.

Pour filling into the crust and place in the oven, and bake for around 1 1/2 hours. After about 40 minutes, turn the cake so that it browns evenly. If it’s browning too fast, put a piece of aluminum foil, shiny side up, over the cake. The cake is done when it is mostly solid but “shimmies” slightly in the middle when the pan is tapped. Turn off the oven and let the cake cool one hour inside the oven. Remove from the oven let cool completely, refrigerate.

Keywords: Dessert, Intermediate, Cake

( RG1433 )