One of my favorite foods is chestnut. I love eating them as is but I also like desserts using chestnuts. In fall, you’ll see chestnut cream cakes called “Mont Blanc” a lot in Japan. I used to enjoy eating them while I lived there.
The traditional Mont Blanc cake is made with dairy and eggs. I tried a few times to perfect the vegan version of a Mont Blanc cake recipe. The hardest part was creating vegan whipped cream with a neutral taste.
I used coconut whipped cream first while thinking it probably wasn’t going to work. The result was what I expected. Coconut was overpowering, and I couldn’t taste chestnuts. I also tried tofu but that also failed as the flavor of tofu was too strong. While I was making vegan ricotta the other day, I thought this might work. And it did!
Basically, this cake has four components. When you cut into the cake, you’ll see a sponge cake as the base, chestnut paste in the middle, then a whipped cream layer and finally chestnut cream piped like noodles. I’ll post separate recipes for sponge cake, chestnut paste and whipped crease so this posting doesn’t get too long.
This is not a simple recipe like most of my other recipes but it’s worth making it because it tastes so good! I’ll show you the step-by-step instructions but the shorter version of the recipe and a list of the ingredients are available at the bottom of this posting. Let’s begin!
- Cut sponge cake with a ring mold. If it’s too thick, slice it so the cake is about 8 millimeters (0.3 inch) high.
This is before slicing it.
This is after sliced into a thinner piece.
2. Roll chestnut paste into a ball about 3/4 – 1 inch (2 to 2.5 centimeters) and place it on sponge cake.
3. Cover chestnut paste with whipped cream.
4. Mix chestnut paste and whipped cream well.
To do so, first mix chestnut paste with a spatula until it become month.
Then, add whipped cream and mix them well. When you make whipped cream, you can sweeten it with white sugar to your liking. I actually didn’t add any sugar but it still tasted good. If you add sugar, you need to use white sugar so it doesn’t overpower the chestnut flavor.
5. Pipe chestnut cream over the whipped cream layer.
To do so, you’ll need a piping tip like this.
When you pipe chestnut cream, you want to do it continuously (no stopping).
You many want to sprinkle powder sugar for decoration. Somehow, all powder sugar that I sprinkled was melted so you don’t see it.
6. Top the cake with chestnut in syrup (optional). I used a dried Gardenia fruit (kuchinashi in Japanese) to make chestnut yellow.
It took me a while to come up with this recipe but I am happy with the result. It resembled the “real” Mont Blanc cake very well. I would definitely make this while chestnuts are available.
I hope you give it a try!
- 4 2.75 inch sponge cake
- 2-3 table spoons chestnut paste
- ¼ to ½ cup vegan whipped cream
- 1-2 chestnut(s) in syrup (optional)
- *Chestnut Cream
- 1 part vegan whipped cream
- 2 parts chestnut paste
- White sugar (to your liking)
- Cut sponge cake with a ring mold. If it's too thick, slice it so the cake is about 8 millimeters (0.3 inch) high.
- Roll chestnut paste into a ball about ¾ - 1 inch (2 to 2.5 centimeters) and place it on sponge cake.
- Cover chestnut paste with whipped cream.
- Mix chestnut paste and whipped cream well.
- Pipe chestnut cream over the whipped cream layer.
- Top the cake with chestnut in syrup (optional)
Adrienne Lowe says
This is really lovely! Looking forward to reading the “Coming Soon!” recipes. 🙂 I need a good vegan sponge cake recipe. Thanks!
admin says
Thank you! I’ll posit the other recipes soon!
Rachel says
….did you? It’s 2020
admin says
I actually posted the recipe right after but I forgot to update the link. I’m sorry I just updated the link. I hope you’ll try it. 🙂