Flour Or Almonds For Chocolate Cake

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Olive Oil Cake (from NIGELLISSIMA) has two options. One is a gluten free version made with ground almonds (almond meal) and this gives a very moist cake that is particularly good served warm as a dessert. The second option is to make it with plain (all-purpose) flour, which is not gluten free but gives it more of a traditional rich chocolate cake texture.

We suggest that you use either ground almonds or plain flour and not both or a mixture of the two as the quantities would be difficult to adjust - you should use the almonds or flour according to the texture of cake you would prefer and whether you would like the cake to be gluten free. So for the cake you need either 150g (1 1/2 cups) of ground almonds or 125g (3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon) of plain flour. The weight of plain flour is lower as flour absorbs liquid, whereas ground almonds do not. If you used a higher quantity of plain flour then the cake would end up on the dry side.