Chocolate Chestnut cake

My fridge freezer broke down a few days ago. A spectacular suicide, beginning with an unaccountable ticking noise that you barely notice as you slope into the kitchen at 6am on a working morning, that then, bit by bit, penetrates your consciousness while you put the kettle on. Then you take one fatal step to the side and slip ingloriously on 6 hours of defrosted fish juice, on to your butt.  It was food armageddon. Thereafter followed one of the most stressful and miserable days I have had in quite a while. Caling round for a repair mechanic willing to turf out for a refridgerator celebrating its 11 birthday this year. Forking out a callout fee while being told that the compressor has given way and will cost more than three hundred quid to replace - a death knell for my beloved Maytag Admiral. Despairing looks at piles of defrosted fish, meat and vegetables. But hey. It's only food at the end of the day, right? A very kind neighbour loans me a fridge/freezer that is temporarily empty, and I fill the fridge part with my defrosted stuff. I throw out half of the fridge contents and look at the rest. A lot of milk, butter, cheese. I have a little think. I take all the fish back out of the fridge. I fry, bake or poach it, and put it back in the freezer. That's a week of dinners sorted. Yay. I work through my recipes for cakesthat use shedloads of milk and/or butter. I  rustle up a milk tart (see earlier post for detail). I use up my warm ricotta and mascarpone in a white chocolate cheesecake. I use up the sour cream on the Magnolia Bakery recipe for sour cream breakfast buns. And then I decide to make a chocolate chestnut cake. What has happened is that I have channelled all my frustration and stress into a conveyer belt of Melinda cake classics, and I am now on a roll. I want to make something new. Sod the fridge. I head out to the nearest supermarket and scour it for pureed chestnut. I make for the internet and spend a happy hour comparing recipes. Finally I light on Nigella's chocolate chestnut cake recipe. I like this one because it is flourless. It uses loads and loads of egg white, whisked and whisked and then folded carefully into my concoctin of chestnut, egg yolk, sugar, butter and melted chocolate. And it rises, elegantly and fragilely, and turns into a mousse-y, rich amazingness that makes me totally forget for a few minutes what prompted me to try it out when I had already made two other cakes and 16 sour cream breakfast buns.I can't honestly taste much chestnut. But I guess this is a triumph of form over content. The texture of pureed chestnut gives punch to the lightness provided by the egg white. I guess. Who cares? It is a Thing of Beauty, another for my Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame, a cake born out of adversity (ok, I know. Just an exploding fridge freezer. But I am a foodie. Loss of a fridge is like loss of an arm). This would be my personal definition of making lemonade out of lemons.