Pancake With Chestnut Cream: A Gourmet Recipe
As Candlemas approaches, why not make a pancake cake? This fun cake to make with kids is simply a stack of pancakes with the topping of your choice. Here is the recipe for the chestnut cream pancake cake.
Ingredients
Here are the ingredients needed to make a chestnut cream pancake cake for 6 people:
250 g flour
50 g of sugar
1 level teaspoon of baking soda
2 large eggs
25 g soft butter
50 cl of milk
1 tablespoon of rum
500 g of chestnut cream
a few walnuts
some powdered sugar
5 cl of neutral oil or melted butter to grease the crepe pan
Preparation of the pancake batter
For this recipe of pancake cake with chestnut cream, you need to prepare a large quantity of sweetened pancake batter and flavored with rum.
To note: if you are preparing this cake for children, replace the rum with vanilla extract.
1- Melt the butter in the microwave or in a saucepan and set aside.
2- In a large container, mix the flour with the sugar and baking soda.
3- Make a well and break the eggs in the center. Start to incorporate them with a whisk, adding successively the melted butter and the rum.
4- Add about 40 cl of milk little by little, until you obtain a fluid paste without lumps.
5- Reserve about 10 cl of milk to be able to relax the batter before cooking the pancakes, as it will thicken while resting.
6- Let the pancake batter rest in the fridge for at least an hour.
Pancake cooking
To make the chestnut cream pancake cake, you need to prepare about 20 pancakes in a small pan or crepe pan about 20 cm in diameter.
1- If the pancake batter seems too thick after the resting time, add milk and mix well with a whisk.
2- Heat your frying pan or crepe pan over high heat.
3- Grease the pan with a paper towel soaked in oil or melted butter.
4- For each crepe, pour a small ladle of batter into the pan. Circulate the batter well in the pan so that the pancake is thin and even.
5- Cook the crepes 2 to 3 minutes on each side, flipping them with a wooden spatula.
Note: don't forget to grease the pan with oil or melted butter between each pancake.
6- As they cook, keep the crepes warm between two plates. This way, they will remain soft enough to assemble the crêpe cake.
Assembly of the pancake cake
Once you've made about 20 pancakes, assembling the cake is fairly simple and quick.
1- Place a first crêpe on a serving plate.
2- Cover it with a thin layer of chestnut cream, ideally using an angled spatula.
3- Place another crêpe on top and repeat the operation until all the ingredients are used up.
4- Finish the cake with a plain crepe, without covering it with the chestnut cream.
To note: depending on the diameter of your pan and the thickness of your crepes, you will assemble the chestnut cream crepe cake by stacking between 15 and 20 crepes.
Cake decoration
To decorate the chestnut cream pancake cake, I used powdered sugar, walnut kernels and also pieces of pancake.
When cooked, my last crepe was not perfectly round and had irregularities because I didn't have enough batter left. So I used it to create a sort of flower in the middle of my cake.
1- If you have a plain crepe left over (whole or not), cut strips of dough a little wide.
2- Roll them on themselves to form a kind of rose or flower. The same method is used to make a rose out of marzipan (see the method in the article opposite).
3- Once you have shaped your crepe flower in the center of the cake, sprinkle it with a veil of powdered sugar by sifting the sugar in a small colander.
4- Add a few walnut kernels. Walnuts go very well with the chestnut cream because they balance out its sweetness. It also adds crunch to this moist cake.
Tasting advice
Once you've made the chestnut cream pancake cake, I recommend eating it within the day so it retains its fluffy texture.
Get a sharp knife to cut this cake. The cutting is a bit tricky but still fun. The many pancakes that make up the cake then become visible. Happy Candlemas to all!
