Chestnut and Chocolate Cake

I thought I would squeeze in a quick and easy recipe post before Christmas. I will be completely honest with you, this recipe was my second attempt, the first was an absolute disaster. I was trying to remember how I made this last year and managed to create a coconut oil drenched monstrosity. Thankfully I asked my Instagram friend, and chef extraordinaire Alexandra Dudley for some advice, and she suggested I use olive oil instead, and voila, a very quick, seasonal, light and pretty delicious chestnut and chocolate cake (even if I do say so myself). And I nearly forgot, it is also gluten, dairy and virtually refined sugar free too, hurrah!

I'm afraid there aren't many pictures of the process because I wasn't sure I was going to share depending on how it turned out second time around. But seeing as it is so easy. I am sure you will let me off.

Ingredients

150g chestnut flour
75g coconut sugar
30g walnuts
50 - 75g dark chocolate chopped in to small chunks (I use 85% to keep down the sugar but use 70% if you'd prefer)
3 tablespoons of non dairy milk
1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
3 eggs
100 ml light olive oil

Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees C.
Grease and line an 18cm loosed bottomed cake tin. (My picture shows a 20cm cake because that is the smallest tin I have but a smaller tin would give a deeper cake).
Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well, and that's it. I am a very lazy cook, I imagine if you melt the sugar and whisk the eggs pre-mixing, then the cake might rise a bit more, but I will leave that up to you.
Pour in to the prepared tin and bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave in the tin to cool.
Enjoy!

So there it is, my simple chestnut and chocolate cake, yum! That is it from me this year, thank you so much to all of you who read this blog. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and I will see you again in 2018.

Emma x