Creme de Marrons or Chestnut Cream

When I was a child, and it rained over night, we would go to the nearest forest and search for “cepes”. Cepes are big mushrooms similar to portobello that seem to pop up after a good rain. I remember never being very good at finding them, because they would often hide under the leaves. So often while my parents searched for them, I , on the other hand would search for other things. And I would pick chesnuts. Chestnuts… Yumm.

We would roast them in the open fire at home in our living room using those huge pan with holes on them, or mom would boil them. Sometimes, mom would also serve them as a side for dinner. I really love, love chestnuts. And I am always very excited to find them in the store, though often they are of poor quality or have worms inside most of them.

Last week, as I was picking up some groceries at Costco ( yeah again..), I found a bag of chestnut and just picked it up just to see what they would taste like.

I don’t know really what i was expecting…but they are not good to snack on. They are good to cook with though. A good friend of mine had just mentioned that his favorite was chestnut puree so I decided to make that with them. I had never ever made chestnut puree or creme de marron so after browsing the internet, I decided to follow the recipe found the recipe on Marmiton.

Ingredients:

1 bag of chestnut or about 567 gr.
450 gr of sugar or about 1 3/4 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of water
1 tbsp of unsweetened real vanilla extract

Place the chestnuts in a large bowl and set aside.

Place the sugar in a large saucepan with the water and cook. When the sugar is completely dissolved, take about 1/4 cup of the sugar mixture and empty it over the chestnuts.With an emulsion mixer, puree the chestnuts. Set aside.

Continue cooking the sugar mixture and cook until the mixture starts boiling and the “bubbles” are big and almost look like soap bubbles. Remove the pan from the stove, pour the chestnut puree in it, add the vanilla extract and stir well. Place the pot back onto the stove and cook on low temperature for 15 minutes or until the mixture is very thick (and will not fall off a spoon if you were to place it upside down) . Be careful to stir often. When it is ready, remove the pot from the oven and let it cool.