Can I Substitute Flour For The Almond Meal For Flourless Chocolate Brownies?

Our answer

Nigella's recipe for Flourless Chocolate Brownies With Hot Chocolate Sauce (from NIGELLA EXPRESS) uses ground almonds (almond meal) instead of regular plain (all-purpose) flour. This gives a moist and fudgy brownie that is also gluten-free.

Unfortunately we would not recommend substituting the almonds with plain flour as the flour will absorb a lot of the moisture from the other ingredients and the brownies will probably come out as dry and cakey. Instead we would suggest trying another of Nigella's brownie recipes that uses plain flour. Nigella has several brownie recipes and the recipe for Bacon Brownies is available on-line. It is possible to omit the bacon and golden syrup and instead add 100g roughly chopped walnuts, which should be folded into the batter at step 5 with the chocolate chips.