This recipe for Sweet Chestnut Ice cream was sent to me by one of our fabulous Spanish wwoofers. Racquel claimed to be terrible in the kitchen, but turned out many delicious dinners for us to share. One of our favourites was a tuna empanada pie with a yeast dough. I could have eaten all of it from the tin!
On another occasion she made croquettes from our left over beef casserole, with the direction from her mum in Galicia. Oh how we missed her when she left amongst the chaos of Covid in 2020.
As we head into the depths of Autumn, I looked up the recipes she sent me from Spain when she returned to her family. It was autumn in Spain and they were harvesting chestnuts in her region. One of the joys of having people share our home is the sharing of family recipes. This has become one of my favourites.
This was the recipe she sent for Sweet Chestnut Ice Cream:
Ingredients:
500g chestnuts.
400ml milk cream.
2egg whites.
150g sugar.
2 tablespoons of icing sugar.
Instructions:
1.-Cook the chestnuts (without the first lay) in water for 15 min.
2.-Drain and put in a bowl.
3.-Add 150 ml of milk cream and mix until make puree.
4.-Put the sugar in a saucepan, add 50ml of water and cook until make syrup.
5.- Add the syrup to the puree and mix.
6.-Let cool.
7.-Assemble the remaining milk cream.
8.-Add the icing sugar to the milk cream assembled and mix.
9.-Also assemble the egg whites.
10.-Slowly mix the chestnut puree with the assembled cream and the whites.
11.-Put in the freezer 45min.
12.-“Beat” with the electric mixer and return to the freezer 30min more.
13.-“Beat” again.
14.-Keep in the freezer at least 4 hours.
15.-“Beat” before serving. (You can add a few small pieces of chestnut to the mixture before putting in the freezer for the first time)
I’m looking forward to this on a rich chocolate cake later on this evening!
If you’re a sweet chestnut fan, check out our chestnut pesto recipe.