Can I Make The Coffee And Walnut Layer Cake Gluten Free?

Our answer

Nigella's Coffee And Walnut Layer Cake (from KITCHEN) has sponge layers that incorporate ground walnuts and are sandwiched and topped with a coffee-flavoured buttercream. It may be possible to make the cake with a gluten-free plain flour blend or all-purpose gluten-free baking mix but as we have found in the past that gluten-free flours benefit from an addition of ground nuts, we would suggest increasing the amount of walnuts in the sponge to 100g and reducing the gluten-free flour to 150g. However, as we have not tried the cake this way, we are unable to guarantee the results.

You may instead like to think about using Nigella's Gluten-Free Banana Bread recipe. Replace the ground almonds with ground walnuts, add 2 teaspoons of espresso powder, omit the dark chocolate chunks and increase the chopped walnuts to 150g. if you can't buy ground walnuts then you can blitz 100g walnut pieces with the rice flour in a food processor until fairly finely ground. Make a half quantity of the buttercream to generously top the loaf cake.