I’ve had a move away from family recipes to explore gluten free baking. My initial attempts substituting gluten free flour in regular recipes had varying success, shortbread ok, bara brith (a Welsh tea bread) less so. I decided to look for recipes which were designed  flour free. A quick search took me to Nigella Lawson’s website nigella.com which has lots of delicious flour free choices.

So far I’ve tried her chocolate olive oil cake (also dairy free), flour free brownies and clementine cake. All turned out well, I’m blaming my ancient oven for the burnt top of the clementine cake!

I cut off the “overcooked”bits and added lime buttercream

All three of these use ground almonds as their main “filler” so beware if you have a nut allergy. They are pretty rich and calorific too, enjoy in moderation….

Nigella advises that they are best enjoyed fresh and perhaps even warm but  you’d need quite a large party to polish them off. The  brownies at least freeze well.

chocolate brownie – I had to “test” after freezing

I have cooked a version of the clementine cake using polenta rather than almonds but can’t find that recipe at the moment, if I remember correctly it produces a denser cake.

After all that “testing”  thank goodness for sunshine and some lovely walks.