Recipe : home made chestnut spread

I followed this recipe, and changed some things in the process to save me some time. So here's how I did it : 

Ingredients : 
- fresh chestnuts 
- 800gr of sugar per kilo of cooked chestnut 
- 25cl of water per kilo of sugar 
(I'll help with the calculation formulas below, it's easy)

step 1 :
Find yourself some big chestnuts, cause it takes time to peel them. 
I personally find it easier and faster to peel them when they're still fresh. I start at the bottom, with a sharp knife, and peel towards the point. I do that on two sides of the chestnut, and then with my fingers I can easily remove the rest of the peel. 

Step 2 : 
Throw them in a big pot, and cover them with water. Cook them for about an hour, until you can smash them with a fork. 

Step 3 : 
Filter the chestnut-water (keep it aside), and using a soup blender, make a nice chestnut paste. 

Step 4 :
Weight your chestnut-paste. 
For every kilo, you will need 800gr of sugar. To calculate it, apply the following formula :
*weight of your chestnut paste in grams* x 800 / 1000
The resulting number is the amount in grams of sugar you need to use (though I always use a little less)

Now to know how much "chestnut-water" you need, apply the following formula : 
*weight of your sugar* x 25 / 1000 
The resulting number is the amount of cl of "chestnut water" you'll need. To make it simple, I like to turn that into grams, that I weight on my basic kitchen scale. As an example : if the result is 50cl, I will use 500gr of chestnut-water. 

Step 5 : 
In a big pot, add the juice & sugar (and some vanilla if you have that in your kitchen). Heat it up at soft-medium heat until it boils, while stirring to melt and mix the sugar with the water. 
Add the chestnut-paste. I used my soup blender once again to mix it all up smoothly. 

After about 10min, pour into sterilized pots

Step 6 : 
enjoy! 
I love it on bread, or mixed in yoghurt (try it!!)
If you have other ways you like to eat it, I'd love to hear! I'm sure it must be incredibly yummy in pastries/cakes too. 

____

Good to know : 

- As a reference : I had about 2780gr of chestnut paste, and ended up with 12 classic jam pots. 

- if you have patience and time to kill, you can remove as much as you can of the dark skin at the end of step 2. This will make for a very smooth texture result. I don't have that patience, and not removing it still gives an amazing result.