Amaretto Substitute For Sunken Chocolate Cake

Our answer

NIgella's Sunken Chocolate Amaretto Cake with Amaretti Cream is a gluten-free cake made with melted chocolate and ground almonds (almond meal). It is flavoured with amaretto liqueur, which is made from bitter almonds (or sometimes from the kernels of apricots or peaches, which have a similar flavour). For the cake itself you could use some almond extract instead of the liqueur and we would suggest using 1 teaspoon. We would prefer to use almond extract as it is a natural product, almond flavouring is usually a synthetic flavouring and can sometimes have a slightly odd after taste. If you can't find almond extract then use vanilla extract instead. It won't be a chocolate amaretto cake without the amaretto, but either of the extracts will help to bring out the flavour of the other ingredients to make a delicious sunken chocokate cake.

For the amaretti cream the crumbled amaretti biscuits themselves will add flavour, so we would just omit the amaretto liqueur and maybe add 1 teaspoon of icing sugar (confectioners' sugar) to the cream before whipping, to sweeten it very slightly.