“Castagnaccio”, Tuscan Chestnut cake

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Castagnaccio is a traditional Tuscan cake born as a poor peasant dish thanks to its cheap main ingredients: chestnut flour and water. To give it more flavor it’s then enriched with raisins, pine nuts, olive oil, and rosemary. I know it sounds like a savory dish, but you’ll be surprised by its sweetness.

You know it’s really Autumn when Tuscan moms and grandmas start baking the Castagnaccio. Thanks to its super-easy recipe, every woman in Tuscany knows how to bake this sweet and savory chestnut cake. Even if they don’t know how to cook anything else. So, it comes the time of year (late October and November) where every household eats Castagnaccio.

It’s so quick and easy to make that I’ve rarely seen my mom or grandma making it. It just suddenly appeared on the table and everybody was so excited to eat it that it disappeared rather quickly as well.

When I asked my mom for her Castagnaccio recipe, she just told me “mix flour and water until you get a pancake batter consistency”. That’s it. No measurements, as it often happens with Italian moms and grandmas. But in this case, it really is that easy and it’s almost impossible to get it wrong.

In my family, the Castagnaccio is always in squares (or rectangles), not slices. So, I did this recipe in a 20x20cm (8×8″) square baking pan. Although there are really no restrictions, so you can easily make it in a round pan of 22cm (8.6″) diameter as well.

Chestnut Flour: How it’s made and used

Chestnuts harvest is in October when they start falling from the trees. In this period, you’ll find around the streets of some Italian cities, men selling roasted chestnuts in paper cones, called Caldarroste. When you walk around the city you’ll immediately smell the amazing aroma from far away. It will attract you like a magnet to the small Caldarroste cart. 

Chestnut flour producers harvest the chestnuts and then dry them for about 20 days. After which they will toast them and grind them to get fresh chestnut flour, also called “farina dolce” (sweet flour).

In Tuscany, there are many chestnut trees and the chestnut flour is therefore quite easy to find. Thanks to this we have a long tradition of chestnut cookies and cakes. The most famous one is the Castagnaccio – also called Baldino or Pattona in other parts of Tuscany. There are also different varietions of this cake in other parts of Tuscany, with walnuts in place of pine nuts or with the addition of orange peel.

If you want another yummy recipe that uses chestnut flour, try these Chestnut cookies with Pumpkin jam.

The Recipe

If you like this recipe, try also these other sweet recipes:

• Simple Italian Sugar Cookies
• Cenci, Carnival Fried Ribbons
• Roasted Rhubarb Oatmeal

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