It’s getting very festive around here, there was last week’s mincemeat Danish pinwheels and now I’ve made chocolate and amaretto mont blanc. I’ve never tried a mont blanc, but I thought they looked really cute and I like the fact they are named after the famous mountain in the alps.
The other reason I made these is because I had some chestnut puree leftover from another recipe I’ve been trying and I hate things going to waste. I’d been planning to make a mont blanc ever since I started this blog, back in 2014, but I kept putting it off because I thought the piping would be really fiddly and I wasn’t sure if I actually liked chestnut.
I was right to be worried about piping the chestnut cream, it is really fiddly, but after tasting my first bite of these, I didn’t need to worry about the flavour. I looked at quite a few different recipes and then I decided, I didn’t really like any of them and I wanted to come up with something of my own. So I chose a chocolate sable breton for the base, and I wanted an amaretto cream, because it is my absolute favourite liqueur.
Don’t be too worried how your piping looks on the chestnut cream as they get a very liberal dusting of icing sugar, which I definitely used to hide any piping flaws. These are a beautiful little treat, they keep really well in the fridge for a couple of days, just dust them again with icing sugar if you need to just before serving.
Chocolate and Amaretto Mont Blanc
Ingredients
- ***Chocolate Sable Breton***
- 90 g Plain Flour
- Pinch of fleur de sel
- 1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
- 20 g Cocoa Powder
- 60 g Caster Sugar
- 2 Egg Yolks
- 75 g Unsalted Butter Softened
- ***Chestnut Paste***
- 120 g Unsalted Butter Softened
- 300 g Chestnut Puree at room temperature
- 6 Tbsp Icing Sugar sifted
- ***Amaretto Cream***
- 250 ml Whipping Cream
- 2 Tsp Amaretto
- ***To decorate***
- Icing Sugar
- Gold Leaf
Instructions
- To make the chocolate sable breton, put the plain flour, fleur de sel, baking powder and cocoa powder in a bowl and mix together. Put this to one side.
- Put the sugar and egg yolks in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until light and pale. Add the softened butter and mix, the mixture may look curdled, but this is fine.
- Then add the flour mixture and mix on a low speed until combined. The dough will not completely come together, tip the dough out onto a sheet of baking parchment and knead it into a ball.
- Place another sheet of baking parchment on top and roll the pastry out to a thickness of 5mm. Place the dough in the freezer for 20 mins to rest.
- Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and take the pastry from the freezer, peel off the top layer of baking parchment. Place the pastry in one piece on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 12 minutes, don't allow the pastry to colour at all at the edges, you want it to remain chocolate coloured.
- As soon as the pastry is baked, take a 6cm round pastry cutter and stamp out 12 circles from the pastry. Transfer the circles to a rack and leave to cool.
- To make the chestnut cream, take the chestnut puree and beat it with the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer. The two ingredients need to be the same temperature so they mix together, then add the icing sugar and bring it all together. You should end up with a smooth buttercream, place it in the fridge a little to firm up if it's too soft.
- Place the cream in a bowl along with the amaretto and whip until it forms stiff peaks, put the cream in a disposable piping bag and leave in the fridge to stay cool.
- When the sables are cooled, pipe blobs of amaretto cream on top of the sable, pipe upwards and leave a gap of around half a centimetre for the chestnut cream.
- Beat the chestnut cream to make sure it's fully combined and place the cream in a piping bag fited with a small straight nozzle. Pipe the chestnut cream around and over the whipped cream, making sure you cover it entirely.
- Dust the Mont Blancs with icing sugar and decorate the top with gold leaf.
If like me you’ve never really eaten chestnut before, I can reassure you that these taste absolutely delicious, they are sweet and not at all savoury. They would be great for a New Year’s eve party or for part of a Christmas eve buffet as a sweet canapé. Check out the rest of my recipes for this time of year in the seasonal section of my blog.
If you have any suggestions for any festive recipes you’d like to see me make, please let me know in the comments. I’m thinking mince pies with a twist, a sort of plaited stollen and some festive confectionery.
Thanks for reading.
Angela
10 Delicious Mont Blanc Desserts You Will Love to Try.
[…] Chocolate and Amaretto Mont Blanc […]
Jodie Dodd
These are so adorable! They almost look like little Christmas trees! I can imagine how great they taste. I do love Amaretto, especially with a bit of 7Up. 😀 x
Yasmin
These look absolutely gorgeous and so sophisticated. I’ve been pondering what to make for my family Christmas Eve get-together this year and I definitely think I will be making these! My family absolutely love chestnuts and this will be such a treat for them. Thank you for such a beautiful recipe! xx
patisseriemakesperfect
Thank you so much Yasmin, these are so cute aren’t they? They are so photogenic and a little winter wonderland theme seemed great. I hope your family enjoy them.
italianhomecooking.co.uk
Well done – they look delicious. I generally make mont blanc Italian-style: a chestnut-cocolate paste, sieved and covered with unsweetened whipped cream (often decorated in classy patisseries with broken maron glaces and /or candied violets). I do not pipe the chestnut cream – we use a ricer. i will try your versions with the choc sable’. Thanks, ciao, Stefano
Ps: just discoved your blog and it looks very,very tempting.
patisseriemakesperfect
Ciao Stefano, grazie mille (that is pretty much the extent of my Italian)! I have seen the version of mont blanc that you mention, marron glace are great, I didn’t have any of these though.
Thank you for the lovely comment, I’m so pleased you like my blog.
Jessica
Wow this is the perfect desert for the upcoming holidays! x
Jessica — NinetyCo
patisseriemakesperfect
Thanks Jessica, so glad you like these, they are definitely worth making.x
Hannah Hossack-Lodge (Domestic Gothess)
They look delicious Angela. I have yet to try a mont blanc but I do really like chestnut so I should get round to making them! The amaretto cream sounds amazing, I’ve been drinking amaretto hot chocolate in the evenings recently to warm up, I love the stuff.
patisseriemakesperfect
These are so good Hannah – I love amaretto and it sounds like it would be fantastic in a hot chocolate! You;ll love these if you like chestnuts.
Everyday Sarah Jane
Seriously? These looks gorgeous! And delicious! A perfect dessert for the holiday season!
patisseriemakesperfect
Thank you 🙂 I am so pleased you like this, they would be great for the holiday season!
Platter Talk
Elegant, beautiful and I’ll bet ethereal on the palate!
patisseriemakesperfect
Thank you for such a lovely comment! This tastes fantastic, your description is very kind and spot on about the flavour.
Allison (@CelebrateSweets)
This is so beautiful. I’ve never had anything like this, I’d love to try it!
patisseriemakesperfect
It’s really great Allison, not too sweet and really tasty – you’d love them!
Ruby_&_Cake
They look like sweet baby christmas trees! I love them. Chestnuts for me are such a flavour of christmas.
patisseriemakesperfect
Ruby you’re absolutely right, they do look like christmas trees. Chestnuts are so christmassy, I love them so much.
Stephanie@ApplesforCJ
These look great and would be perfect to have around for the Holidays.
patisseriemakesperfect
You’re right Stephanie, they’re perfect to make ahead and they would be great for the holidays.
Garlic + Zest
This is glorious! They are so pretty and festive — and your combination of chocolate sables, chestnut and amaretto sounds absolutely decadent! I get the sense that it’s not overly sweet. Am I right? I like desserts that show a little restraint rather than a sugar bomb!
patisseriemakesperfect
You’re right they aren’t too sweet at all, just the right hint of sweetness which is mellowed out by the chestnut puree. Thank you for such lovely comments.
rebecca@figsandpigs
These look so good they look like walnut whips. I love the sound of chestnut cream yum.
patisseriemakesperfect
Ha! You’re right Rebecca, now you mention it they do look like walnut whips – they taste so much better though…I might be biased 🙂