A stunning way to celebrate wild chestnuts, if you can get your hands on some – I love gathering them from my local woods or on an autumnal foray in the park, but if you can’t find wild chestnuts you can buy them or use vac-packed chestnuts.
Chestnut snowballs
Print ThisIngredients
- 50g shelled, cooked chestnuts
- 2 tbsp butter or coconut oil
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp coconut sugar or
- Icing sugar, plus 75g for dusting
- 4 tbsp maple syrup
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, plus 1 tsp for dusting
- A few gratings of fresh nutmeg
- Pinch of sea salt
- 75g plain white
- 2 tbsp chestnut flour
Instructions
Finely chop or pulse the chestnuts in a food processor until they’re as fine as you can get them. Add the butter and olive oil and pulse until combined. Add the sugar, maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and flour, and pulse until it all comes together into a dough that’s soft but firm enough to work with, a bit like Play-Doh. If it’s looking too dry, add a little water (1–3 tbsp) to bring it together.
Chill the dough for 20 minutes in the freezer, or freeze to make the biscuits at a later date. I like to make batches of the dough during chestnut season and freeze it to cook at Christmas.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Rub a large baking sheet with enough oil to lightly coat. Scoop the dough up by the tablespoon and roll into 12 smooth balls. Arrange on the baking sheet leaving 2–3cm between each biscuit. Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden. Cool fully before removing from the tray.
Mix the remaining sugar with 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon and dust over the cooked biscuits to coat. Serve straight away or store in an airtight container for up 3 days.
Gifts From the Modern Larder by Rachel de Thample is published by Kyle Books, £16.99. Photography by Ali Allen
