No Alcohol Nutella Cake

Asked by pieceofcakepieceofpie. Answered on 28th July 2014

Full question

Hello! I really love the look of the Nutella Cake and I'm dying to get in the kitchen and bake it! I'm Muslim and I don't drink alcohol, is there anything I could substitute this with in the recipe? Or would removing it from the cake make it drastically less delicious?

Our answer

Nigella's Nutella Cake (from Domestic Goddess and on the Nigella website) is made with Nutella, ground hazelnuts and melted chocolate. These are the main ingredients that give the cake its chocolate hazelnut flavour. Nigella adds a little Frangelico, a hazelnut flavoured liqueur, to the batter and this will slightly enhnace the flavour but we do not believe that omitting the liqueur will really reduce the deliciouness of the cake.

The icing also contains a little hazelnut liqueur. It will be slightly more noticeable here if you omit the liqueur, but the icing is a truffle-like ganache mixture and will still be extremely good in its non-alcoholic state. Nigella suggests that you replace the Frangelico with an equal quantity of water for both the cake and the icing (1 tablespoon for each).