What makes this dish so special?
What I love the most about the Chestnut Tiramisu:
- The chestnut cream filling – it’s nutty and earthy flavour really elevates this traditional tiramisu
- The digestive biscuits – easily accessible and cheaper than ladyfingers
- The coffee pouches – no need to make your own espresso shot, just use the Korean coffee pouches!
The creamy layers are made by boiling chestnuts in milk. This allows the chestnut flavours to steep into the milk.
I got these chestnuts from the Korean grocery shop. They were located in the snacks aisle and are ready to eat. If you don’t have cooked chestnuts in your supermarket, you’ll need to roast the chestnuts first.
After the chestnuts have steeped in milk, you’ll need to mix it in a food processor or blender.
To ensure the texture is thick and not watery, at the start, I recommend adding a little bit of milk with the chestnuts (not all the milk).
If the chestnut mixture is too thick, you can always thin it out by mixing in more milk. But if it’s too watery, it’s hard to save unless you have spare chestnuts to use.
The chestnut paste should look like this – thick and easy to assemble.
I really love the taste of chestnut paste – it reminds me of fall desserts. It kind of tastes like roasted sweet potatoes too!
As this recipe was featured during the convenience store challenge in the show, the original recipe cleverly uses whipped cream from Korean cream buns.
However, the Korean cream buns I bought from a local Korean grocery store in Sydney had barely any cream. So I’d recommend you to skip the cream bun, and whip up your own heavy cream. It’s way cheaper and it will yield a lot more cream!
The original recipe uses Digestive biscuits. These taste more ‘rough’ and less buttery and light than ladyfingers. I’d recommend you to use any biscuits you have on hand already.
The digestive biscuits are dipped really quickly in Korean pouch coffees. I used hazelnut latte, but the original uses toffee latte.
I recommend just using any coffee you have on hand. In my opinion, pure espresso would taste better because of its bitter and deeper notes, but this pouch coffee is a time saver!
I grated some chocolate on top of the tiramisu. But for even more chestnut flavour, I’d recommend you to grate roasted chestnut and chocolate on top.
Chestnut Tiramisu
Ingredients
Method
- Simmer snack chestnuts and the milk for 10 minutes on low heat.
- Turn off the heat and let it cool down completely.
- Put into a blender, blend into a puree and then mix in with cream cheese.
- Scrape out the cream from the cream buns then mix with the chestnut puree.
- To assemble, soak 2 digestives into the hazelnut latte very quickly, then layer with the chestnut cream on top - repeat this 3 times
- Finally, dust the top with grated chocolate and garnish with pan toasted granola in the middle
