Almonds In Christmas Cake

Our answer

Nigella's Traditional Christmas Cake (from NIGELLA CHRISTMAS) has a chart that gives quantities for three different sizes of rich fruit (Christmas) cake. Ther recipe does contain ground almonds (almond meal) as these help to provide moisture to the cake. If only almonds are the problem then you could substitute a different ground nut and ground hazelnuts would be the closest alternative as they are relatively easy to find in ready-ground form. You could also grind any other nuts that you prefer in a food processor, though do this carefully as nuts can turn oily if over-processed. Adding some of the sugar from the recipe to the nuts in the food processor can help to reduce the risk of this.

Otherwise it would be better to use another recipe that does not contain nuts. The Easy-Action Christmas Cake contains sweetened chestnut puree (sometimes labelled as chestnut spread). Often people who can't eat nuts can eat chestnuts, but you should always check in case of allergies. Nigella's book FEAST also contains the Time-Honoured Christmas cake recipe, which is a very traditional rich fruit cake that does not contain any nuts.