The main ingredients are only three and very simple: chestnuts, water and sugar, to which vanilla is added in most cases; however, the long and complex preparation and the quality of the raw material makes the iced brown a valuable product and also quite expensive.
For the success of marron glacé, in fact, it is not enough to use any type of chestnuts; They're preparing generally with browns, valuable cultivated chestnuts that have the characteristic of being larger, rounder, lighter and sweeter common wild chestnuts; they also peel more easily.
The preparation times for these delicious chestnut-based sweets are quite long and the gestures to be made that are only apparently simple. To make marron glacé at home you need, in fact, several days and a lot of patience, to peel the chestnuts without breaking them and to carefully follow the whole long preparation process, up to the complete glaze.
In any case, trying your hand at the recipe is not necessary because marron glacé can be purchased in pastry shops and can also be found in large-scale distribution and specialized sites on the Web. They are not cheap, but all quality products, you know, have a cost.
Read also The properties of chestnut flour >>
Come gustare i brown iced
The best way is to eat them as they are, as you would the most delicious of pastries. They can be served at the end of a meal and are also suitable for special occasions: Christmas, New Year's Eve, birthdays… They are excellent served with tea or, for a more alcoholic combination, with rum.
A handful of marron glacé is enough to decorate a cake or make a simple cup of ice cream more interesting vanilla-flavoured. For example, a common chestnut cake becomes more interesting and sumptuous if we decorate it with marron glacé alternating with sprigs of whipped cream.
Whole are beautiful and almost sorry to break them, but another way to use marron glacé is to crumble them before adding them to creams, ice cream or other sweet recipes.
For example, a very simple and effective dessert can be obtained by preparing single portion shot glasses, to be filled with crumbled marron glacé, crumbled meringue and chantilly cream, proceeding by layers and alternating the ingredients.
Another quick and highly effective idea is that of cover them with dark chocolate. Finally, the are very greedy crepe stuffed with marron glacé and whipped cream, perfect for breakfast, on days when you expect to have to waste a lot of energy.
The marron glacé can also be used for unusual savory combinations. An idea? A simple crouton becomes more interesting when stuffed with cream cheese and a marron glacé.
Read also
> Chestnuts, 3 recipes for the winter
> Chestnut cake, 3 recipes
