Horse Chestnut

Horse chestnut, commonly referred to as a buckeye or buckeye nut, is a tree that is native to North American, and is actually the state tree of Ohio. This woody, tall buckeye tree produces enormous amounts of distinctive buckeye nuts, so called because of the dark spot at the center, each fall. Early settlers and natives found that the raw nut closely resembled the eye of a deer, hence the descriptive name. Buckeye nuts can be used in many different kinds of cooking, including buckeye candy, buckeye balls and buckeye cookies.

In order to cook with the horse chestnut nuts, you must first know what is a buckeye. They are not available in most grocery stores, and are usually collected from the wild buckeye trees in various locations. Buckeye nuts in raw form are poisonous and should never be consumed, but once they are cooked and mashed they can be used for a variety of cooking purposes, although that is very rare now because of the poisonous nature of the nut. . Rather, buckeye recipes are more likely to be buckeye like only in appearance.

A simple buckeye candy recipes is:

1 stick butter
1 box powdered sugar
1 1/2 c. peanut butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1 pkg. (12 oz.) chocolate chips


Mix top four ingredients until soft, roll into balls about the size of a quarter. Dip in the melted chocolate chips just to give the appearance of a dark nut with a lighter center, just like the buckeye nut.

The recipe for buckeyes is a bit misleading, in that it doesn't actually contain the nut itself, rather the recipe "buckeyes" has peanut butter as the major flavoring.

It is also important to keep careful watch over your livestock if you have a pasture that is full of trees that are any variety of the horse chestnut. Horse, cattle and sheep toxicity can occur if any type of livestock eats too many of the leaves, fruit or seeds or bark. Humans can also have severe effects.

In Europe the processed horse chestnut extract is used in treating chronic venous insufficiency that may result in lower leg swelling, varicose veins and leg pain and itching. The research is very clear that the extract is highly effective in treating these conditions, although care must be taken as some patients can potentially have serious side effects including potentially deadly allergies to this herbal medication.