Chocolate Sheet Cake Queries

Asked by Tiffmoon. Answered on 13th September 2014

Full question

The Chocolate Sheet Cake sounds delicious! Do you think it would take well to gluten free flour because the batter is so wet?

Thank you for the wonderful Sheet Cake recipe. One question - can I make this in a microwave? Pooja.

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Sheet Cake (on the Nigella website) does have a wet batter as this helps to give the cake a moist and fudgy texture to the baked cake. Usually wet batters (such as brownie batters) are adaptable for gluten free flours as the gluten free flours tend to absorb more liquid. However brownies also include melted chocolate and this tends to help the structure of the cake.

We suspect that the cake can be made with a commercial gluten free flour blend though we have not tried this ourselves so cannot guarantee the results. Bear in mind that as it is gluten free then the cake will be more delicate and crumbly. We would suggest lining the pan with foil first, with the foil coming up and over the ends of the pan to create a "sling" to help to lift the finished and fully cooled cake out of the pan. Then line with baking parchment (parchment paper), as directed in the recipe.

We have not tried making cakes in a microwave and the pan size is quite large so we are not sure that it will fit into a standard-sized microwave. However if you wanted to try baking the cake base in a microwave you will need to use an approprate microwave-safe pan and follow the instructions in your microwave handbook.