Dark and Sumptuous Chocolate Cake

Asked by Alison F. Answered on 26th November 2015

Full question

If you do not have expresso powder can you use something else in for the Dark And Sumptuous Chocolate Cake, or can you just not put it in?

Loved the look of this vegan cake on Simply Nigella recently. I was wondering if anyone had tried it gluten free, and was it by simply replacing the plain flour with a gluten free flour blend (such as Doves Farm)? Many thanks

Our answer

The flavour of Nigella's Dark And Sumptuous Chocolate Cake (from Simply Nigella and on the Nigella website) is deepened by the addition of some espresso powder, as coffee is complimentary to chocolate. For the frosting you could instead use 1 tablespoon of instant coffee and stir this into the saucepan once the ingredients have come up to boiling point. For the cake batter use another use 1 tablespoon of instant coffee. Dissolve the coffee in the hot water and then add this coffee liquid to the sugar and coconut oil.

If you omit the coffee then we would suggest instead adding a teaspoon of vanilla extract to the frosting and also to the cake batter. For the frosting add the vanilla once the chocolate has been added and swirl it in with the chocolate. For the cake the vanilla can be stirred into the liquid ingedients before they are added to the flour mixture.

Unfortunately we have not attempted a gluten-free version of the cake as it is already quite tender and without eggs in the recipe we were concerned that the cake would be too fragile and break apart easily. Also in some of the recipes we found that the gluten-free flour blends gave the cakes a slightly odd texture.