Chocolate Chestnut Cupcake

I don’t know about you, but when I find an exciting new (to me) ingredient, I like to drop it into as many culinary settings as I can to see what happens.  Some ideas, like my “let’s make hot chocolate with red wine instead of milk!” notion, though, are rather ill-fated.  Random combinations are not always for the faint of fork.  But isn’t living on the edge fun sometimes?

My newest obsession — as evinced by the recent post on chestnut snickerdoodles — is chestnut flour.  (The next step is whole chestnuts.  I’ve already got my eye on the roasted and peeled ones on the shelf at Trader Joe’s.)  In that vein, I decided to make chocolate chestnut cupcakes.  With cinnamon and pine nuts.  What the heck — why not?

I’m happy to report that these came out a whole lot tastier than the red-wine-hot-chocolate debacle!

Chocolate Chestnut Cupcakes
(Both gluten-free and glutenized versions are provided here, though it would be a shame to scrap the lovely coconut in favor of the much-more-bland wheat. And remember — if you can’t find coconut flour, feel free to make your own by grinding unsweetened coconut flakes in a coffee grinder.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a standard 12-muffin muffin pan (or use paper cupcake liners) and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together:

1/4 cup cocoa powder, preferably un-Dutched (un-Dutched cocoa has a stronger flavor)
1/4 cup almond flour (you can grind sliced almonds in a coffee grinder to make your own flour)
1/2 cup chestnut flour
1/2 cup coconut flour (again, you can grind your own; see above recipe note)*
1 T. cinnamon
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup pine nuts (optional)

* You can substitute whole-wheat flour for the coconut flour.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together:

2/3 cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B
2 eggs, preferably from free-range hens
1/4 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup melted butter, preferably from grass-fed cows

Pour liquid mixture into flour mixture and combine with a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom of the bowl to make sure you’re combining everything thoroughly. Promptly ladle/spoon the batter into the waiting muffin tin and pop it in the heated oven. (Speed is of the essence when you’re dealing with gluten-free baked goods.)

Bake for about 25 minutes, then do a toothpick test to see if the cupcakes are done. If not, return to oven and bake another 3 minutes before checking again.

Enjoy!

Chestnut Snickerdoodles

Chestnuts roasting over an open fire used to be pretty popular in the States, but that was before chestnut trees that had been imported from Asia caused the American stocks to fall prey to a nasty fungus.  By the 1940s, chestnut trees were very few and far between.

Roasted chestnuts remain popular in other countries, though — street vendors still cook them over open fires in the public squares of many towns.  (In Spain, they’re called castañas asadas; in Switzerland, they’re heiße Maroni.)  Others eat them candied, grilled, puréed, in stuffing, as a stand-in for coffee, and even as beer.  Italians are particularly creative with chestnuts in both savory and sweet dishes.

While I’m not a huge fan of the actual roasted nuts (although I would love to try chestnut beer!), I do enjoy using chestnut flour in sweet baked goods.  Chestnuts are like almonds:  they’re dry enough to be ground into a nice fine flour, but they’re still moist enough to make soft cookies and breads.  Flavor-wise, chestnut flour can be the main attraction (as in these snickerdoodles) or can blend into a pleasant background. In this recipe — partly in homage to Italian cookie traditions, partly because they pair well with chestnuts, and partly because I think they’re sadly underutilized in American cuisine — I’ve also included pine nuts.

Chestnut Snickerdoodles

Note: since chestnuts are nuts, they’re naturally gluten-free.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease two cookie sheets.

Whisk in a medium bowl:
2 cups chestnut flour (if you’re a bit short on chestnut flour, use 1 cup chestnut and 1 cup sorghum or brown rice flour)
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon

Cream together in a large bowl:
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup sucanat (depends on sweet you want your cookies to be)

Beat into the butter mixture:
2 eggs, preferably from free-range hens

Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture.

Also stir in:
1/4 cup pine nuts

Spoon little mounds of cookie dough onto the greased sheets. (I use an ordinary teaspoon to ensure that I get uniformly-sized cookies.) Be sure to leave an inch or two between each soon-to-be cookie — they’ll spread as they bake.

Bake for about 12 minutes and check to see if the edges are turning golden brown. If they are, your cookies are ready to be eaten!  Store uneaten cookies in an airtight container for up to a week.

Enjoy!