Ingredients:
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 cup canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla paste
1 1/2 cups chestnut flour
1 cup flour
2 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup Dutch process cocoa
2/3 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spray with baking spray or grease and flour one Bundt pan. Set aside.

In a large bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the butter, sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla paste until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together the chestnut flour, flour, espresso powder, baking powder, salt and cocoa. With the mixer running, stream in the dry ingredients and beat until well-incorporated. Fold in chocolate chips. Scrape into prepared Bundt pan.

Bake for 50 minutes or until a thin knife inserted in the cake comes out with just a few damp crumbs.

Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then remove and cool completely on a wire rack.

My thoughts:

I know: baking, July. Not exactly the best time to make a recipe that bakes for nearly an hour. But, sometimes you just want cake. And what a cake it is! I had a chestnut cupcake a while back at Lavender Moon Cupcakery in Alexandria, VA and just loved it. So moist and flavorful that I’ve been wanting to recreate it ever since. I found chestnut flour at our local Italian store and picked it up and it keep looking at me from the cabinet until I finally got up my nerve to use it. The cupcake I had was gluten free (made with all chestnut flour; I asked) but I being gluten free isn’t a concern for me and I was worried about how it would hold up structurally in a Bundt cake. No one likes a Bundt cake that breaks when you lift it out of the pan! So I decided to use mostly chestnut flour but a little regular flour too. It ended up being the richest, most chocolatey  and moist cake I literally have ever made. I always think it is so difficult to get true chocolate flavor in a cake, but wow, that was not a problem with this one! It was just amazing. I think the chestnut flour (which doesn’t add too much of a chestnut flavor to the cake) just really worked with the buttermilk and cocoa and deepened the chocolate flavor. A must have for the chocolate lover.

Note: If you’d like to experiment and try this with all chestnut flour (I think it might work) please do so and let me know how it turns out!